Doodle Patterns and Quilting

I love to freestyle machine quilt. And teaching is one of my favorite classes to teach, one of the things that I tell my students all the time is the importance of learning how to doodle, and to doodle with meaning. Here I have some doodles, that have led me to some really great quilts. I'm gonna show you some different designs that have some straight lines in them and some curvy lines in them. And then how to join those designs together to make really interesting doodle quilts.

We'll start with just doodle designs, first, we have some squares that have a curved outline, and then I've taken those squares and broke them into sections, and then at each section I've put a different type of quilting design. The ideas are pretty limitless, here, I've got a large circle with different corners. Here, I've put a big flower with several different designs around it. Notice how there are straight lines next to curvy lines, here I've put a feather, and then different circles, this ones kind of patchworky with little squares. This ones a little patchworky also, and again, notice how we have straight lines with curvy lines, straight lines with curvy lines.

Here I've put half of a feather with some flowers, and here we have a big paisley design with swirls and straight lines. One of the things I like doing the most are flowers, so this design has several flowers in it, and then I started putting in different background designs. And each one is slightly different from the other. All of these designs are based on free motion quilting, and so, here are some practice blocks that I've done, we have some very curvy designs here, this first one is simply loops, this next one are swirls, and in between the swirls, we have these wonderful jagged curves. This one is circles, and inside some of the circles I've put some asterisk or straight lines to add some interest.

Here, we have the classic clamshell, but it's got extra clamshells inside to fill the space better, and this one, some people call it geography or thumbprint, I think it looks more like the lines on your thumb. So in addition to the curvy designs, we wanna have more straight lines or linear designs. In here, we have a spiral, but the spirals are different geometric shapes with straight edges. Squares that go in and out of each other. I call this one making tracks, it kind of looks like the tracks that a tire would make and it's all straight lines.

Now, this one is not straight lines but it is linear, the lines are curved because curvy lines, when they're really long, lines are easier to do curvy than straight. And this is the same idea, but it's a basket weave, and after the curvy lines are done, then smaller lines are put in each section, one in one direction, one in the other to give it a basket weave effect. So I'll show you what I do with these, I'll take a piece of fabric, and a backing fabric that's slightly smaller than it, and two layers of batting, I think that two layers is really important, so that you get a lot of poof in the design. Here, I've started with a flower and this is my basic flower, and this is the flower with more definition put in it, some lines for veins and a more interesting, doubled up, outside edge. After I've done the flowers or whatever the design motif is going to be, I'll separate the background sections.

So here, I've separated out the sections, and I've gone over these lines about four or five times so that they're really thick and heavy. And then I finally go in and put different background designs in them. And again, pay attention to the fact that some of them are curvy and then some of them are more straight, more straight and more curvy, and it's that juxta position of the two different types of lines that makes the piece really interesting. Then when these are done, they'll be put on top of this fabric, after it's been quilted. So I always choose a thread that has high contrast with my background fabric, and I match that thread to go with the base fabric I'm going to put the quilts on when I'm done.

So let me show you a finished quilt, I really like the way this looks, it's got a bold contrast and it's very, very interesting. In this first block, and it's taken directly from one of my drawings, I sectioned it out with an L, and then in each section, I put something either straight or curvy, straight, curvy, straight surrounded by curvy. So that it has that really nice interest, notice too about this really stark contrast, the black on the white, white. In this one, I did a feather, and then added lot's of interest inside the feathers, on it. And then surrounded the feather, which was very curvy with lines, so that we have, again, that juxta position.

Now, this final one is very nine patchy looking, kind of looks like a quilt block. And we have several different sections, and each one has something different happening in it. Now, I didn't want to leave this whole section unquilted, but I did wanna put those lines really far apart, so that it would have a whole lot of, poof to it. All of these blocks, really feel good when you touch them, they have tactile texture. When I got ready to do the background, I knew I wanted to put lots of interesting quilting in it too, but I didn't want it to compete with these wonderful little doodled quilts, so I used matching thread.

Here, you can see that I've done the same thing when it comes to mixing straight line designs with curvy line designs. One of the best things about making doodle quilts is that, you can just jump into one, on plain fabric and if it turns out great, you can make a quilt with it. And if it doesn't, it's just wonderful practice for free motion quilting. So think about improving your quilting skills and making a couple of doodle quilts.