Machine Quilting Designs and Ideas

I make about 80 quilts a year these days and I teach machine quilting constantly, probably three or four times a month sometimes. And so I see a lot of different machines and a lot of different quilt makers. And I see the struggle that so many beginner machine quilters and even experienced machine quilters go through when they're trying to get better at their craft and trying to figure out how to quilt which quilt. One of the things that quilters seem to have missed along the line is that for most artists, it takes a long time to get good at your craft. We expect ourselves to be good after a couple of quilts. Well, I'm here to tell you you're gonna have to make a few ugly quilts. That's just the only way you're gonna learn. Another great way to learn is to practice and practicing can be done in lots of different ways. But I think a wonderful way to practice is by creating your own little resource that you can turn to later, that gives you ideas for quilting. And that's what I've got here. All of these pages, I call them, each have a different quilting motif or design on them. And, no, they're not all my designs. They're not all new to me designs. They won't be all new to you designs either. There's really nothing new under the sun. But these are the way that I do some of the traditional designs that other quilters do. And a lot of these things I've picked up from other design ideas like cracks on the pavement or a piece of wallpaper or a piece of crafting paper that had a really cool design on it. A lot of them are also just doodles, and doodling is one of the best ways to increase your skills for machine quilting. What I'm gonna do is show you these pretty rapidly, tell you how I think the design is best used on the average quilt. And then later, if you want to, you can use that wonderful pause button of yours and go back and look at them longer. So let's take a look at some designs and try to get an understanding of how they would be best used when you have practiced them and gotten good enough at them to wanna put them on your quilt. We're gonna start with the more simple designs. And actually, the one that I think is one of the most important designs and that's that gentle curve. So these have been stitched on squares of fabric. I happened to choose a 10-by-10 because it was easy to work with. I also put grommets on them and I'm holding them together with these little rounds that are really easy to be able to fold the picture of one back to look at the next piece. So we start here with a gentle curve and on this piece of fabric, I simply used a hera marker to mark out a grid. Once the grid was marked out I simply stitched from corner to corner. When you do this in open space, you end up with this wonderful kind of Oriental-looking design. It could become more elaborate. This is again, that same corner to corner gentle curve. It's simply done more often and it has more overlapping areas so that it has this wonderful flower. This is the same corner to corner gentle curve done in a slightly different way to yield a slightly different flower. Here you can actually, hopefully on the camera, see those lines. So there's a diagonal line here that was drawn with my hera marker. And I simply use that diagonal to stitch on either side of, with a gentle curve. And here we have the same gentle curve again. And this time we've added a little triangle on each end. Again, it's just doodling on the sewing machine. Now, we get to this long, wavy line that makes a crosshatch. I'm gonna turn the page here and show the simpler crosshatch. So that's just one thread going diagonally one direction and then diagonally another. As you look at some of these designs, pay attention to their imperfection. I am not a perfectionist. I think it's hard to be a perfectionist and be a quilter. And I really wish I could teach all of you to cut yourself some slack when it comes to that. I want the machine quilting to be fun. So I'm an eyeballer, I'll start with one line and then just kind of eyeball the distance for the rest. So this is a wavy crosshatch and this is a double wavy crosshatch. So it's simply two lines close to each other when I do that crosshatch. These are great for negative space. This is another one that's quite simple to do. Wavy lines in one direction, wavy lines closer together in the other, great for negative space or borders. This is the classic swirl with a wave put in between and this is done in rows. And I do that to show that it's great in a border. A wonderful allover, I call this '60s architecture. Another allover, which is simply various shapes and sizes of swirls. This is a square swirl done in rows. So again, it's good for a border. Triangle allover. A triangle done in rows, so it's good for a border. This one here is done in rows also and it's simply straight lines with swirls. So again, great in a border, but also a nice allover. Here it is done where nothing really lines up in regular rows, and so it's a better allover. Wonderful stitch here. This is great if you're trying to add realism to a landscape and you want a rocky path or stones or something for a house or a barn. This is good in negative space but it's a little bit more ornate. Another good negative space. I really like these because they're very freeform and they're also great in negative space. That one and this one. Now, the next group is gonna get a little bit more ornate each time. So this is another wonderful fill. It's separating out segments in negative space, and then putting lines in different directions. A wonderful basket weave. Again, it's just lines going in one direction and the other to make a basic crosshatch, and then filling in those spaces. A traditional clamshell, but done on the diagonal. Another clamshell but done with multiple layers and in an every which way. A general swirl, great for negative space like the last two were. This is a wonderful stitch that can look like animal fur or can look like flames. Great negative space too. This is a gentle swervy arc that can be done in rows. So it's great for a border or it can be an allover negative space. Here's a swirl mixed with those little arcs. And here are the arcs all by themselves. Great for negative space. Here we have an allover of a small seed-style leaf which is a great way to fill up negative space. And I've used a variegated thread and notice that the variegated thread shows up equally on the surface. None of the thread is the exact color as the background. An allover heart that's great for negative space. An allover leaf that has an almond shape that's nice in negative space. The wonderful asterix. I love this in negative space, however, it's very decorative so use it carefully. And this is an allover continuous design but it's hard to see that continuous design, so it makes it kind of fun. But you can actually see a line that joins one to the next. You can see it when you're looking for it, but when you first look at it, you don't see it at all. This is called water and it's a wonderful, gentle movement with swirls. So it's not calm water. This is called thumbprint and it's wonderful in negative space, but again, it's highly decorative so you don't wanna use it in a place where it's gonna compete with your piecing. This is great in rows so it's nice in borders, but remember anytime you have a zig-zaggy line or a jagged line, it's gonna add a lot of energy so don't let it overwhelm your piecing. Here we have simple circles inside long rows with straight lines in between. Now, it's pretty simple to do a straight line that's about a maximum of two inches long. Anytime you do something longer than two inches it's hard to keep that line straight. And then here we have flourishes. And I really like these by themselves, but I also use them a lot to link motif to motif. Which takes us to some motifs. And I am not kind of a girly-girl at all and I don't wear flowers or decorate with flowers in my home, but I love to stitch flowers on my quilt. And this is kind of my signature flower. I do it all the time. And this is the basic flower. And this is the same flower just with more ornate things added to it, so becoming more decorative each time. What I really want you to pay attention to is the stippling in the background and how it's allowing the flower to really poof off the surface. Here we have a flower too, but instead of the stippling we have a loop-de-loop in the background which is more decorative. The stippling doesn't cross over itself. So let's look at that again. It doesn't crossover itself so it doesn't make another shape. When you add another shape to the negative space, that adds interest. That's why stippling is so commonly used in negative space. Here when the line crosses over itself, it forms little circles. So the loop-de-loop is actually kind of competing with the flowers and you're not seeing them as well as you could. Here we have another shape of flower and this is also a stipple. Again, a stipple is any line that doesn't cross over itself. This is called an angled stipple and it's filled with angles of all different sorts. Because it has so many straight lines and angles, it's a wonderful thing to put behind something that's very curvy like this flower. The juxtaposition of the two is gonna help show off that flower. Here, we have an allover flower and what's used to link the flowers to each other is a wonderful little tiny leaf and a stem. We want that leaf to be small so that it shows up differently than the flower and it fills up more space so that the flower can poof up. Here's an allover flower that's great for negative space. Here we have those asterix again but they're being linked with the loop-de-loop. Now the loop-de-loop is a good link but it's best for things that are very straight which is what this asterix is. And we have a great flower in the center here. A single flower here with a stipple. A single flower with a straight stipple. We saw the angled stipple before, now this is all 90-degree angles. And so it has a very graphic appeal and it looks wonderful around this very round flower. And then here's the angled stipple again. Now this is a stitch that some people call combs and other people call bubble E's, like the capital letter E. I really like this stitch a lot because it's very easy to change its shape to morph in and around different motifs. So you can see how easy it is to elongate it or shorten it when we're trying to put it in around this flower. And it's wonderful in that negative space. It's also great in borders because it can be done linearly. Here we have another style of allover flower. And this is another flower. Now, I marked squares here and then I simply mark the center of each square and I started in the center and moved out. Now, these are not linked. You could link them by putting a line across. I keep this little baby in here because it's such a wonderful flower. And I'm not sure how well you can see it because unfortunately, I chose a color that didn't work well on this fabric. I'm losing about half of the design motif because every time the thread itself matches the fabric, the design is gone. But I really like how this angled line links these flowers to each other. And then here is the classic echoing. So we've got the three flowers and then we have an echo around them. Again, pay attention to these because I have not perfectly not marked those. I'm not gonna mark my quilts. They're too hard to get the marking out, it takes too much time to mark them, and it kinda takes the fun away for me. So we have variances in how wide those echoes are and I like the way that looks. So don't give yourself a lot of heartache over your imperfections. What I am always striving for is neat and tidy because for me, neat and tidy is very much good enough. Perfection just doesn't do it for me. I want my quilts to look like a human made them, not a machine. Now we're getting to more ornate designs again and circles are very, very popular right now. They're popular because they look so cool, they're very fun to do, and you can touch them. I love to put them on baby quilts and watch the babies feel the quilt. So here we have circles that are very large, surrounded by circles that are smaller. Those small circles allow those big circles to come out and really raise up that actual, tactile texture. This is very similar to the last one only in the larger circles I put asterix in there and they end up looking like sand dollars. So I call this sand dollars and sea bubbles. Now, here we have circles too, but the outer circle is an oval rather than a circle and the inner circle's a circle, and these are called olives. Here we have circles that are not touching each other. They're actually linked by loop-de-loops which make more circles, a great negative space. Here we have a wonderful swirl that looks like a nautilus and it's simply a swirl that goes in and then as you come out, you make little lines that go from side to side that give it that nautilus feel. An allover heart that's wonderful for negative space. Rows of hearts that are great in borders. Another allover heart with little swirls in between. Take note of the fact that I'm trying to fill all the negative space somewhat equally, that the hearts are various sizes and in various directions, and that these little swirls are a lot smaller than the hearts, which allows the hearts to come forward. What we don't want is our link or our negative space to have a design that's the same size as our motif because then they'll compete with each other and we won't see the motif as much. Here we have some little funky star, suns, but notice that they're not linked. It's not a design you're gonna wanna do all over a whole machine, bed-size quilt because you're gonna be stopping and starting and nodding off all the way. But it's a fun design to do in a small area. Here we have a similar type of star and it's actually linked together with the loop-de-loops. Now, this star is that same old star that we learned in kindergarten, where we simply do the crossover. And as soon as we hit that last leg, we swirl away until we can make another star. So it's really easy to do, great in negative space on kids quilts, or on those kids quilts that you wanna do an allover design on. Another star, but much fancier. So here we have a star that doesn't cross over itself as it's formed. It starts with a swirl in the middle and it's linked by those wonderful flourishes. Here we have clamshells. Now, these clamshells are done with a simple Japanese design added to them, a wonderful curve added to them, or a basket weave added to them so that we can really doll them up. More of those with more flourishes inside. Here we have a fan with a big sun in it. And here we have that same type of sun but the fans are kind of going everywhere and so are the suns. Now my favorites when it comes to quilting are leaves and flowers. So here are the leaves that I do. I think every machine quilter comes up with her own way of doing vines and these are the vines that I like to work with. And we start with a simple leaf here and then we get more ornate as we work our way out. Vines are great as allover fill, but they're also wonderful in borders. So here we have an allover fill. A really large leaf with echoing. Three larger leaves with flourishes and berries. I love this leaf. This leaf gets very filled and so it flattens it out so it's not gonna poof, so we have to make sure we have plenty of stitching in our negative space so that they don't compete. These are called paisleys. And I really like the paisley but we're getting very ornate here, so we wanna keep these in areas that it's not gonna cause the quilting to compete with the piecing. So if you have really simple blocks or really wide plain border, that would be a nice place to put this. This is probably my all-time favorite practice block. I love the depth of the dimension. It's also a paisley with another paisley inside with little circles that look like peas. Another allover paisley with a swirl inside each one. And now we're gonna get to some feathers. So this is a half feather and an allover fill so this is great for negative space. This is a half feather that's much larger with stippling in the background. And here we have the forming of a feather. The forming of a curled feather. A large feather and then an allover feather. More large feathers with circles surrounding one and lines in the negative space. A wonderful allover fill of small feathers linked together by loop-de-loops. Again, very decorative so don't let it compete with your piecing. A very decorative feather, wonderful in borders. Here's a feathered flower. I really like this guy. And it's separated by a type of echo quilting. And again, another feather. A big feather with echo quilting around it. Now, don't forget about your borders as you're practicing because borders are a place that we can often put something really decorative and not have it compete too much with the center part of the quilt. So I practice with border designs too. On these, we can see that we can have a simple design or we can take that same design and make it more ornate by adding a few more details. Here I've added berries in between. Here we have a simpler flower and here we have a flower that, well, it's not a flower, it's actually berries with leaves with a lot more detail. Here's a very simple flower with leaves, much more ornate, lots of more detail to the flowers, more flourishes, just a lot more interesting. So this is not gonna give you much competition at all but this might compete with other things. These are very kind of modern designs and they're great in borders when you wanna add some punch, especially if you use a contrasting thread color. Most the time I use thread colors that match, but sometimes I want to just really pump it up. This is a multiple color design. So the outside of the leaves were done with one color, the inside detail of the leaf was done with another, and then the tiny leaves in between were done with another. So it simply means doing the whole border in the first color, coming back with a second color, and then coming back with the third color. Yes, that means you have to quilt every border three times but it's really worth it. Another multicolored design. A very heavy thread to give us these wonderful curled fern leaves, and then a lighter weight thread in the negative space but also in a contrasting color to add a lot of definition and interest. And then an allover heart-shape leaf. Now, often as I'm playing with the quilting, trying to increase my skills, again, which takes some time. I've been machine quilting now for about 21 years and I think that about seven years ago, I decided I was good enough to teach. And that, that was a long time. So, you know, again, be easy on yourself. Don't expect to learn it overnight. Here we have some designs that were made to go with each other. So this is an allover fill of a flower that would be great in a plain block next to a piece block. And this is a very ornate border that I would only put in a border if the fabric was very, very simple. A tone on tone, a slight mottling, or even a solid, this would be really good. Both of these are done with multiple colors of thread. So here we started with the red flower, came back in and added the blue detail, came back in and added the yellow detail. Here we started with the red flower, came back in and added green detail of the leaves and the grasses, then came back in and added yellow detail in the negative space and in the flower. But they're a wonderful compliment to each other. In this grouping we have a very simple allover fan design with loop-de-loops coming around them. And then here we have a much more ornate fan design. So I could use this, say, in the negative space of a pieced block and in this one in a block that's not piece, maybe a setting block. And then I could come in with this very ornate border. So the three of them would work well together. Now, I hope that one of the things that you're noticing is how the quilting is affecting the surface of the quilt and the plane's present in the quilt. These are two blocks that are pieced exactly the same. I pieced this one so that the star had higher contrast and this one, so that the star had lower contrast. But after quilting, we ended up with kind of the opposite. I quilted this one in an allover pattern using a variegated thread that showed up somewhat equally across the surface of the three different fabrics. But what that did is it not only flattened it out physically, but it flattened everything out to one plane visually. Here I quilted the negative space with the same swirl I used over here. The center, I did a weighty crosshatch. And in the star tips, the gentle curve. So the star tips really pop off the surface, the center really recedes, and the background sort of in the mid-ground. And it has a lot more depth and a lot more interest, as far as I'm concerned. Now, thread color matters too. When we choose our threads for our quilts we need to choose threads that are going to work well for the density that we're stitching with, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. But we also need to make sure that they're going to do what we want them to do. Again, most the time I'm matching my threads. Not until you think that you're really, really good at machine quilting should you think about adding contrasting threads, because those stitches are gonna really, really show. And if you're all wobbly, it's gonna look all wobbly. Whereas, if you're matching the thread color to the surface that you're stitching on, you'll never see a wobbly line. Here we have two similar blocks. A very ornate feather here and a very ornate sort of feather here. I call this a giant pea pod. Here I've stippled in the background and two things are working against me. The stipple is about the same size as the feathers so that's confusing visually. Plus it's the same color as the feathers so that's confusing visually. Here I did the opposite. I took a different size of stipple to fill the negative space with, and I matched the thread to the background. So this design just pops off the surface, whereas this one is getting lost in all the stippling. If I'm gonna go through the, what some might call the hassle of doing this beautiful quilting, I wanna make sure it shows. Now, doodling is what's gonna get you where you wanna go. And I'm a major, major doodler. I doodle all the time. Doodle in the car if my husband's driving, doodle while I'm watching a movie, doodle while I'm talking on the phone if I'm bored with who I'm talking to especially, which probably isn't all that nice but it's a great time to doodle. So I keep pads of paper around all the time. And my favorite thing to doodle is, doodle with is, the very sharp or small Sharpies because they really show. When I doodle, I doodle as though I'm quilting so I'm doodling with purpose. Most the time when people doodle they doodle with just their hands. So they're gonna sit here and they're gonna do their little stipple and they're just using their hand. When I doodle, I use my whole upper body so I can feel the doodle. My whole body is moving with that doodle. And what I'm doing is I'm imprinting the way that doodle feels in my upper body. Kind of sounds silly but that helps me move with my machine. So when you doodle, try to move your whole upper arm and your whole body with that doodle. So when I doodle a flower, I can feel that swirl. And when I get ready to do that petal I can feel that petal. I know how that petal feels. I'm exaggerating the movement right now but that's how it feels inside and that's what you need to get used to. So get yourself some good inexpensive paper to doodle on and a nice pen and practice all of your stitches before you start stitching them. So let's move on to see what the stitching actually looks like.