Quilt Along #34 – Go with the Flowing Lines

It’s a new month and time to change things up on the Free Motion Quilt Along!  Last month we spent 4 weeks stitching through many pivoting designs: Paisley, Lava Paisley, Snake Paisley, and Pointy Paisley.

Make sure to ask any questions that you have about these designs in the comments of this post and I’ll try to answer them all on tomorrow’s Question Thursday post.

Now this month we’re leaving Pivoting Designs completely and tackling Edge to Edge Designs.  These designs all have a simple rule – fill by working from one edge to another, back and forth in a horizontal or vertical fashion.

As for what the “edges” are – it can really be anything.  The edges of a block, the stitched-in-the-ditch lines around sashing, a line you’ve stitched through an area – any of these lines can become the edges you travel and branch off of to form these designs.

Of all the places you can put them, sashing is probably going to be the best place to play and experiment with this family of designs.

Edge to Edge is the largest family of designs on the project, with the most variety in texture.  You can create almost any texture by wiggling back and forth from edge to edge.  These are also very logical designs because you can usually work straight through the area from left to right or right to left, moving steadily through without any risk of stitching yourself into a corner.

So there are many huge benefits to Edge to Edge designs and this month we have 5 weeks to play with them!  Now let’s get started learning how to quilt Flowing Lines:

When it comes to quilting Flowing Lines, it’s really a combination of two types of lines – wiggly echoing line and a gap line.

First a wiggly line from edge to edge.  Travel stitch along one edge and echo that line all the way back to the starting edge.

Echoing is the act of stitching a line parallel and maintaining that consistent distance away.  It can be challenging in the beginning because it’s hard to know where to look when echoing so you can visually estimate the space.

Some quilters look at the edge of their darning foot, some at their hands, some at the space between the lines.  I’m not even sure where my eyes are focusing half the time!  What I do know is this is something that comes with time and practice.  I do remember echoing feeling very weird – like writing with my non-dominant hand or walking backwards upstairs – the first couple times I tried it.

The good news is Flowing Lines is a great design to practice echoing because it’s such a fluid, organic texture your mistakes really won’t show!

When you’ve echoed your flowing line a few times, it’s time to form a gap line.  This line’s purpose is to branch out and form irregular gaps or pockets within the texture.

There’s several ways to form gaps.  You can travel along the line, then branch out and reconnect:

Or you can travel along the edge of your quilting space and wiggle back down to reconnect:

Or travel down the line and branch out to hit the edge:

All of these ways of forming the gaps work great and there’s probably many more.  The point is to form a gap space that’s big and open and noticeable against the echoing lines.

The wonderful thing about this design is there’s absolutely no way to stitch it wrong!  Even if you’re echoes are chaotic, even if your travel stitching is imperfect, even if your gaps are too big or too small, the design will still look good.

Why?  Because it’s organic!  This is a design that literally “grows” on your quilt because it gets more irregular and lumpy and gapy and wiggly with every line.  The more intensely freeform and wiggly, the better it will look.

Yes, you can keep it as simple as the top drawing:

Let’s go quilt!

Leah Day