Design #451 – Twisted Tendril

I’ve been machine quilting pumpkins this week and stumbled across this cool pumpkin vine quilting design. I wanted a free form loopy line that would appear almost like a twisted ribbon. With a bit of experimenting I’ve created Twisted Tendril!

 This funky design is super easy to quilt and it’s a great skill builder for both echoing and travel stitching. The best thing about it? It’s supposed to be slightly messy so even if your stitching isn’t perfect, it’s still going to look great!

 This quilting design is a bit odd in that it doesn’t really work like a normal filler design. I tried filling up a block with it, branching out different Twisted Tendrils from one another and it just ended up looking kinda weird…

I think this could work as a fill, but it would need to be two colors and stitched like a Foundational Design. First form the main twisted tendril, then change thread colors and fill the background with echoes.

So in creating this design, we’ve also created a new subcategory of quilting designs called Accents. This is a suitable name because Twisted Tendril really acted as an accent or embellishment, but you wouldn’t want to fill the whole background with it. It would lose it’s magical, whimsical quality if it was densely stitched all over the place.

I had so much fun quilting this design and the cute pumpkins as well! Be on the lookout for a video next Monday on how I quilted the pumpkin above.

If you’re on the hunt for more quilting inspiration to keep you busy all year, definitely check out my book 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs. This book features the first 365 designs from this project, stitched out in beautiful photos that are so detailed, you can see every stitch!

Don’t forget to share this design on Facebook and pin it on Pinterest to share it with your friends!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day