Free-motion quilting with baking paper

From the Sewing Room – The Stylised Flower motif and how I free-motion quilt with baking/tracing paper

Last time we talked quilting, I had just finished stabilising two charity quilts and deciding how I was going to quilt them. This week I have finished quilting the first of these, and I learned a number of lessons along the way that I thought you might be interested in. There is also a free downloadable template of the flower motif nearer the end of this post if you want to give it a go yourself.

Last week I designed a stylised flower motif to cover the pieced blocks of a red, brown and cream quilt that my daughter has dubbed “Jaffas and Cream”. Do you know what Jaffas are? They are an Australian and New Zealand chocolate treat. Delicious. But I digress….. 🙂

Stylised flower quilting motif over a Jaffas and Cream quilt block

At first I decided I was going to quilt this motif freehand, like the daisy I did on a similar quilt. I planned to mark the diagonal lines with chalk, and once I had the orange peels stitched in place, quilt the petals and corner details around the main lines. But it was not to be. I had “one of those days”, quilting-wise.

I marked up the first block with chalk and set to work. But I couldn’t get the tension between the top and bottom threads just right. Once I had what I thought was an acceptable balance, I couldn’t get the nice sweeping curves I wanted for the orange peel backbones. I started again on a second block, this time with extensive chalk markings to guide the sweeping lines. But still to no avail. I gave up and unpicked.

The dirty culprit….

Coming back at it later, I realised that the pre-wound bobbin was not spooling off nicely. I’m not even sure how to describe this issue in words…. The thread coming off was suffering friction from the adjacent thread still on the bobbin slightly trapping it. But not consistently. That was why I couldn’t get a nice stitch flow and happy tension. This is not the first time I have had trouble with these commercially wound bobbins, but it was the worst. I like the actual bobbin thread, but I will only be buying cones to wind my own bobbins from now on. This was Lesson 1.

Anyway, I re-wound the bobbin thread from the pre-wound bobbin onto a fresh bobbin. Having fixed the main problem, I also changed the needle for good measure. I was ready to go again. But my free-motion confidence and chilled disposition was now shot for the day!

The baking paper approach to the stylised flower motif

In the past when I have wanted to quilt a design that is too hard to do without marking, I have often traced it onto baking paper and quilted over the tracing. Then I pull the paper away. So, feeling a bit frazzled, I decided to ditch the freehand stitching and use a tracing. I have never tried this before on my Sweet 16, but I didn’t expect things to be particularly different to on my domestic machine. Wrong!

Traced stylised flower — Stylised Flower motif after trace-stitching, before pulling off the paper.

It turns out that trace-stitching with the Sweet 16 is a different art to on my domestic machine. I think this is because on the domestic machine you are sitting more over the needle, and it’s slower. Both of these things means it is easier to retrace your stitches exactly when you need to back track. My first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif was messy. It also resulted in too many small fragments of paper to pick out, trapped in the not quite aligned back-stitching. Agggh. I didn’t like it, it didn’t have the clean look that I set out to achieve, and it was going to take too long to clean the paper off 25 blocks. This was Lesson 2.

messy stylised flower — This was my first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif. I actually intended to leave this as it was, but the remaining flowers worked out so much better, that I did rip it out and replace it once the other 24 blocks were done.

I ended up rethinking my stitching path several times to get a much neater and faster result. Lesson 3, and the one I am most satisfied with! If you would like to know how to best stitch out this design using baking paper, here is the method I settled on.

Tutorial: The Stylised Flower Quilting Motif

Supplies and Printing

The first thing you will need to do is print out the motif from the downloadable file below. Then you can trace it or print it onto tracing paper/baking paper/parchment paper. I use “Greaseproof paper” for my projects, found in the kitchen section of the supermarket. It is a type of baking paper. The cheapest versions are best; thinner and less slippery than quality baking paper brands. Save the expensive baking paper for your actual baking! And don’t get confused with waxed kitchen paper. Waxed paper is not good for this project.

Click here to download the pdf of the stylised flower motif.
Please note that the pdf is formatted to the A4 standard for Australia. You may need to adjust your printer settings if your default paper size is “letter”. The size of the provided motif is 5.75 inches square. This is because my blocks started at 6 inches square, but shrunk a little when I stabilised them. The final design is slightly smaller than my blocks, to ensure the whole motif fits inside.

I print my designs directly onto greaseproof paper by taping the greaseproof paper to a piece of office paper as a “carrier”. The greaseproof paper won’t go though the printer alone because it is too flimsy and it gets jammed. I use white paper-backed masking tape to attach the greaseproof paper to the office paper. This has never harmed my laser printer, but I take no responsibility for anything you put through your own printer. If you are unsure about putting unorthodox things through your printer, trace the design by hand.

baking paper printing — Baking paper taped over printed office paper, ready for printing (left) and after printing (right).

Quilting the Stylised Flower

Pin the design to your quilts with quilting safety pins.

pinned stylised flower design — Pinned and ready to go.

First the leaves….

To quilt the stylised flower motif, enter into the design from one corner and travel to the diagonally distant corner through the centre point. Then quilt the first half of the corner “leaflet” and stop.

stylised flower motif step 1 — Follow the red line to quilt his design

I then tear the paper out of the way so that I can complete the leaflet and travel back to the centre of the design without double-stitching over any paper. Use the back of a seam ripper or a pin to neatly score the paper so it only tears away from where you want it gone.

tearing off the paper — Scoring the baking paper for controlled removal. You will also notice in this picture that I adjust the design on the fly to fit each block so that it reaches the edges.

paper removed out of the stitch path — I now use the stitching lines already done as a reference for where to stitch next.

Finish the leaf and return to the first corner of the design through the centre. Finally, finish the little leaflet in that corner.

stylised flower motif step 2

Now, travel along the edge of the block (stitch-in-the-ditch) to one of the two remaining leaves.

stylised flower motif step 3 — Travel along the ditch

Repeat the above steps to quilt the remaining leaves. Except, once you return to the centre after completing the third leaf, enter the first petal and stop with the needle down.

stylised flower step 4 — After finishing the third leaf, enter the first petal. Make sure you pause at the top of this first petal for more paper removal.

Then the petals….

Tear all the paper out of the middle so that you can see where you are stitching and to avoid back-stitching over paper. Be careful to leave the tops of the petals visible so that you can still see where to stitch.

stylised flower motif tearing out the paper — Remove the paper from the flower centre, sparing the tops of the petals.

Stylised flower motif paper removed. — Paper removed. Now quilt the petals using the petal tops and the leaf edges as visual guides.

Complete the petals using the petal tops and leaf edges as visual guides. Quilt into the centre for each petal but stop just short of actually touching the centre point to avoid a build up of thread there. Where petals cross over the leaf edges, don’t quilt into the centre again. Just bounce off the leaf stitching line to the next petal top. Finally, finish the last leaflet as you exit the block.

finished stylised flower motif — Finished stylised flower quilting motif

stylised flower step 5 — After the paper is removed, finish quilting the petals.

What if you want to quilt this design, but not in a block?

If you are not quilting this design into a block and can’t travel invisibly between corners, you can also quilt it as shown below. I did actually do two blocks with this method before I changed to the described method above. I changed only because I found it easier to quilt the “S” shape straight through the centre than to neatly arc through in a half circle to the third leaf. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I just did!

Alternative way to quilt the stylised flower — Another perfectly good way to quilt the stylised flower.

The rest of the quilting on this quilt

I completed the quilt with a vine of leaves in the sashing, and piano keys in the border with orange peels in the border corners.

leaves and piano keys — Quilting in the sashing and border

orange peels in the corner — Orange peels in the corner

That is it for me for this charity quilt. Now it is ready to go to the next quilter in the production process for binding.

Finished "Jaffas and Cream" quilt. — Finished “Jaffas and Cream” quilt.

I hope you enjoy playing with this motif and making it your own. Let me know if you quilt it so I can feature your work for everyone else to see!

Do use a brand of pre-wound bobbin thread for your Sweet 16 that you would recommend. I’d love to know! Please comment below!

For more tutorials and colour inspiration for quilts, follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin’ or by email (sign up in the side bar).

Hope to see you back here next week, still Quilting Your Own Story!
If you enjoyed this post, you might like:
Quilting Bugs in my Garden
Shadow Trapunto Tutorial
31 Days of Finding Quilt inspiration in the Everyday

P.S. Here are the linky parties I am joining this week;
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Busy Hands Quilts
Crazy Mom Quilts
Free Motion Mavericks
Tweety Loves Quilting
Don’t forget to check out these great quilting sites for links to all sorts of inspiration!

And a monthly linky too: Quilting JetGirl

August 25, 2017January 19, 2024

7 Reasons to Quilt Printed Fabric Panels

Our weekly update and a chat about why I am considering quilting more fabric panels….

But first….. what have you been working on this week? Something fun, I hope!

We’ve had a busy few days at Gardner-Stephen HQ, with it being submissions week for exhibits at the Royal Adelaide Show and also Book Week for the children. Book Week involves a school parade where each child dresses up as a favourite book character. The emphasis is on trying to be involved in making your own costume rather than just buying one. Lots of fun but a little labour intensive.

Crochet Christmas stocking — Crochet Christmas Stocking

This year, Miss 9 decided to have her first go at entering an exhibit in the Royal Show. (I think I can safely talk about this in public now, as judging will have already taken place.) Anyway, Miss 9 learned to crochet while we were living in Germany last year, and recently decided to design her own Christmas stocking to enter in the 8-10 year olds home economics class at The Show. She did a great job, don’t you think? She is anxiously waiting a verdict, asking me to check the online results every day! I have tried to encourage her to just be proud of entering. But she is very definitely hoping for a ribbon. Fingers crossed for her.

This week’s quilting adventures

So, as you can see, plenty of creativity going on around here this week. But not a lot of quilting. I have been working on stabilising two more charity quilts, ready for some free-motion quilting to make them a bit more special and unique.

Charity Quilt 1

The first one is a happy child’s quilt covered in big squares of bright colours. Some of the fabrics feature bugs, flowers or birds. Deciding what to quilt on this is easy for a change!!! I know, shock, horror!! Last year I did two quilts covered with flowers, suns, butterflies, dragonflies, leaves and snails. One of them was the quilt I did for my nephew featured in the Digging for Pineapples post last week. I will be dusting off those skills to quilt the same critters on this one.

snail quilting design by Clever Chameleon — Here’s one of the little critter designs I’m going to be using. I’ll tell you more when it happens.

Charity Quilt 2

The second quilt is an adult quilt in red and brown. It is the same pattern as the quilt I quilted with the daisy FMQ motif. It is less feminine than that quilt, but it is still not a bloke’s quilt. The prints include lace, roses and butterflies, and the back is a dusky pink. I am still thinking through what to quilt on this one. Another repeated block pattern…. perhaps something similar to one of the orange peel-derived patterns from ipatchandquilt? Or butterflies?

red and brown charity quilt — The latest adult charity quilt in my queue.

I am leaning towards a stylised flower design to match the geometric and graphic feel of the quilt. Something like this…..

stylised flower FMQ design — Stylised Flower FMQ design, similar to an ipatchandquilt motif.

What do you think? I am hoping it will tie together the large scale leaf print and the lacy print. And then I can fall back to the leaf vine in the sashing that I did last time, which is quick and easy. And simple piano keys for the border to echo the piecing design.

There you go! I had more quilt news than I thought. To tie up for the week, let’s finish off with those promised thoughts on using fabric panels for quilting practice.

An expansion on my thoughts around fabric panels

Last post, I wrote about a little baby quilt that I did some free-motion quilting on. It was made from one of those fabric panels that you see in the quilt store, that I had simply written off as “those things people buy if they need to make a quilt and have no real interest in making a quilt”.

teddy bears fabric panels

But it quilted up so nicely. And it gave me a good opportunity to challenge my thoughts about the value of fabric panels to mad-keen, more experienced quilters. I was definitely pleased enough with the experience to consider using them more often, and here’s why….

Speed

The one obvious thing in favour of using printed fabric panels is how fast you can put together a quilt. Need a baby or toddler quilt in a hurry? A pre-printed panel could be your answer.

Cost

With no cutting, no seams and no left-over fabrics there is very little wastage in a panel quilt. You only pay for the exact amount of fabric you need to cover the surface area of your quilt. Where I live, at least, the cost of printed fabric panels per metre the same as other fabrics, so panels will always work out cheaper than the equivalent patchwork. If you need a bigger quilt than the printed panel, it is a simple task to add a quick border or two.

FMQ beginner friendly

When you are starting out learning to free-motion quilt, one of the differences you will find between your practice pieces and a real quilt is when quilting over the seams. If your patchwork is especially fancy, there can be some pretty bulky seams lurking in your quilt sandwich! These can break your rhythm and make it hard to keep the quilt moving evenly and steadily. Panels have no seams, and therefore allow you to practice quilting on a real quilt and build your confidence before having to tackling quilting over any unpredictable thicknesses.

Another difference I find between my practice pieces and my real quilts is the “stress”. On my practice pieces I am not worried about messing up, so therefore I relax and quilt better. On a quilt that has taken weeks or months to piece, I find it hard to relax, even though it results in better quilting. I found that a fabric panel was more like a practice piece because it doesn’t represent a huge emotional, financial and time investment in its creation prior to quilting. So I relax more, enjoy the quilting and produce a better result.

Accuracy practice

Printed fabric panels are excellent for practising your quilting accuracy. The teddy bear quilt I quilted last week had motifs that I could quilt on or around without having to go to the trouble of marking anything. This is great practice for building muscle memory for free-motion quilting and also awareness of where your needle is. I don’t know about you, but when I first started learning FMQ, my ability to trace a design with the machine was appalling. I would never have been game to try to free-motion stitch in the ditch for example.

fabric panels for quilting Here is a panel my mother gave me many many years ago, before I started quilting. I haven’t touched it because my mother died and I was scared of ruining it. But I know now that I can do an adequate job on it, and one day soon I will lay it out and quilt it. This sort of panel is a great example of one that would be perfect for tracing practice….. just quilt around all those printed pieces as if they were actually pieced and appliquéd!

If you have a printed fabric that is tricky to trace, you can also improve your skills by quilting near the design. Here is an example from early in my FMQ experience, where I just approximated the printed shapes on a bed sheet. Did my toddler analyse my FMQ skills? Absolutely not!!

quilt around printed shapes for practice — Quilt around printed shapes for steering practice

Good for practicing your FMQ design/decision skills

One skill that quilters often need to practice is the decision making process of what quilting to put where. It’s great to ask around and get opinions and ideas, but in the end, it’s you that has to make the final decision. Quilting fabric panels separates this decision process from any distractions that piecing can cause…. like whether the piecing is inaccurate and hard to quilt, or too perfect and is making you nervous to touch the jolly thing! Quilting a few different panels with different themes and motifs is a good way to expand your repertoire. Perhaps knock up a few for a local charity even??

A more useful product

If you want your quilts to be used (I generally do!), fabric panels are your best friend. Commercial printing and no/few seams results in a quilt that can be thrown in the wash and dryer without fear of bleeding and falling apart. Being more robust and “less precious” than an intricately pieced quilt means that a new mum can be more relaxed about using the quilt. Speaking as someone who has been there….. I was given secondhand baby panel quilt that I used for all sorts of things because it wasn’t deemed “precious”. When it was dirty it went in the wash with everything else. When we didn’t need it anymore I handed it to the next person, knowing that it was a great asset. In contrast, the baby quilt my mum made before she died is still in the cupboard….. it has a different kind of worth.

Lesser risk of “Quilter’s Remorse”

Sadly, quilter’s remorse is a real thing. If you have been hanging around quilting groups for any length of time, you probably know at least one person who has gifted an amazing, expensive and laborious quilt to someone, only to be horrified and scarred at the lack of gratitude received. So give your pieced quilts wisely or let them go emotionally when you gift them.

Either way, don’t expect children or young mums to understand or be enthralled with your hours of labour. Many non-quilters simply do not understand the effort – they are not usually trying to be ungrateful. And children live in the now. They love quilts with their favourite characters/animal on. Be awesome and quilt what they like, not your own preferences.

Children also grow up fast and want bigger quilts with the latest character on. So unless you want your quilt to be passed down through the generations, perhaps a series of quick quilts that evolve with the child is better. They will get just as sentimentally attached to a well chosen fabric panel quilt as any other! And likely love them more intensely, even if for a shorter time.

Use your creative time and budget wisely. For “that baby shower gift for a friend of a friend”, a fabric panel quilt is probably a good option!

One word of caution

I mentioned that there is one reason why I don’t like printed fabric panels. And it is this. They can be hard to square up. I found this out when I made baby books for my son, and again when I made a quilt for my mother-in-law. Printed panels often don’t give you a lot of leeway for trimming to square. So be aware of this from the beginning. Block your fabric to square BEFORE you add any piecing or layer up your sandwich, or you may be facing some very awkward decisions between having a wonky quilt and trimming off some of the design in a non-symmetrical manner. Neither will give you much satisfaction.

Clever Chameleon logo

I hope you have enjoyed our little discussion about fabric panels. Let us know your thoughts on using them…. do you use them? Why or why not?

See you next for Colour Inspiration Tuesday!

P.S. Linking up this week with:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
and
The Quilting Room with Mel.

August 20, 2017January 19, 2024

Free-Motion Quilting Decisions and a Printed Panel

From the Sewing Room: Printed Panels and Free-Motion Quilting.

I have been free-motion quilting for a while now. It’s probably 4 years or so since I crawled out of my ditch and started being more adventurous in this way. 😉 But I have just discovered something that I wish I had thought of right at the beginning! And that something is pre-printed fabric panels.

Yes, I knew they existed….. But I have been a patchwork and appliqué snob and I have shunned them. Because I didn’t appreciate the benefits of putting my patchwork aside for a bit and developing my free-motion skills in a way that would let me put all my focus into the free-motion quilting part of a project. And this week I learnt a thing or two. Because I was forced to quilt a pre-printed panel….. and I liked it!

Got my free-motion quilting up and going again

This week I have been concentrating on colour boards and fabric mosaics, triggered by the Summer Crush contest from Stitched in Color. This resulted in 4 colour blog posts and was a lot of fun, but left much less time for sewing than usual. So, to stay happy and in touch with my sewing room, I pulled out a quick project that I have been avoiding a little. My next charity quilt.

The next charity quilt on my list was a child’s printed panel. It was all pinned and ready to go, but it just wasn’t going. Partly because I was out of the mindset of quilting because I have been sewing tumbling blocks patchwork lately instead. Partly because I had no idea what pattern to quilt on it. And a big partly because it will go to a very sick baby with seriously stressed out parents. I have been that parent in the past, and I didn’t want to think about it. All these things added up to a serious lack of momentum.

Teddy bears charity quilt — My latest charity quilt – a teddy bear panel

But I wanted to take a show-and-tell to my next Handiquilter Club meeting on Friday, so I fired up the Sweet Sixteen and got started. I knew I needed to outline the main motifs of the print. I knew I wanted hearts in the aqua border and I knew I wanted some texture contrast between the sections, but I didn’t know what.

When you don’t know where to start, start with what you know

It is my experience that ideas flow better when you are creating rather than thinking. So I started. I outlined the big bears in brown. Then I outlined the little bears and balloons in white by travelling around the inside of the string of motifs and then the outside. Once I had done this I decided to add free-motion quilting in the area between the aqua border and the balloons in a motif I know well. I did loop-de-loops, with the occasional little heart thrown in. That went quite well.

Loop-de-loop free-motion quilting with hearts — Looping stipple free-motion quilting with hearts

I hope you can see the quilting…. it is there mostly for texture. Here’s a diagram of the basic idea….

loops and hearts — Loops and hearts quilting plan

Now my confidence was up. I removed a stack of pins, which made the quilt easier to handle and also look better. And I recognised that the memories of my baby being in hospital in intensive care upset me less when I was working on the quilt than when I was anticipating working on it. Of course, thinking about the thinking was worse than the thinking! Anyway, at this point I felt inspired to fill the background with straight lines to show off the bears.

Straight line quilting to produce diamond grid in background of quilt.

The print has a grid of yellow and aqua flowers and I considered joining the flowers to form a diamond grid. But then I decided to make the flowers the centre of each diamond by quilting straight lines between them. I marked the lines with a hera marker (I am seriously scared of marking white quilts with wash-out pens). Then I free-motion quilted the lines in white thread. I wish I had a quilting ruler….. and knew how to use it! But I got by.

Hearts in the border – testing a new free-motion quilting motif

About the only thing I knew right from when I first unfolded this little quilt for a first look, was that I wanted to do a heart motif in the aqua-coloured border.

A browse through my Quilting to Admire and Inspire board on Pinterest turned up a useful idea. It is this double heart leaf vine motif from Lori Kennedy.

double heart leaf vine from Lori Kennedy — Double heart leaf vine motif from Lori Kennedy’s blog, The Inbox Jaunt.

I didn’t want the extra petals inside the hearts, and I had to decide how I was going to turn the corners, but this was a great launching place. Thanks Lori! The design I settled on after several drafts looked like this.

heart border doodle — How I eventually decided to turn the corners with the Heart Vine motif

I used chalk to place guidelines on the quilt top.

Here is the border quilted onto the baby quilt.

My hearts border free-motion quilting motif

I finished the long ends of the quilt with straight parallel lines to the edges, cut off the excess and sewed the binding onto the front of the quilt. The binding will be finished by hand by another quilter. I hope this little quilt does a little good in a bad situation. ♥♥♥

Clever Chameleon logo in blue Maybe next time I might go into more details on my thoughts of why I should have started quilting fabric panels a long time ago. And one reason I can think of as to why I didn’t. What is your experience of pre-printed “quilt tops”? Let me know in the comments below!

Until we chat again, go Quilt Your Own Story!

P.S. The follow-up blog post, where I did actually get around to arranging my thoughts on printed quilt panels, is here: 7 reasons to Quilt Printed Fabric Panels.

P.P.S. Linking up this week with The Quilting Room with Mel. Visit the linky party for more great new projects on the web this week.

June 23, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room – The Daisy Motif

Learn how to quilt this informal daisy motif onto large, pieced quilt squares.

Remember how I said I was going to start doing some charity quilting to increase my quilting practice without using up my entire quilting budget? Today I plucked up the courage to start on my first charity quilt. There is a part of me that was a bit concerned that the owners of the quilt top may not be enthralled by whatever I did. I am not a professional quilter, after all. They have already invested their time and money into this quilt – what if I did bad things to it?! But that attitude will not get quilts into the hand of recipients or practice into my quilting muscles, so I took a few deep breaths and this is what happened….

Choosing a quilting motif

I quickly discovered one interesting thing. Apparently I think a lot about quilting a quilt while I am piecing it. It was quite a new experience to decide how to quilt a piece without weeks of prior musing. I can’t say I was prepared for how different it felt to be handling a quilt I was not intimately familiar with. Has anyone else experienced this?!

Coffee and TimTams charity quiit all pinned — The beautiful quilt I received to quilt. It arrived thoroughly pin basted and ready to go.

The quilt I have been entrusted with has chocolate brown pieced squares with cream coloured sashing. I like to think of it as Coffee and TimTams (an Australian chocolate biscuit). My daughter argues that it is actually Maltesers and Milo (more Australiana). But anyway, at first glance I assumed it was a man’s quilt and instantly thought to quilt a strong geometric design on it. But on closer inspection I discovered that the fabric prints were predominately floral. So I decided that this little beauty needed something feminine in the way of quilting to bring out it’s gentle side.

While I got my head around this thought, I stabilised the quilt by stitching in the ditch in every sashing seam (ie every seam except those inside the brown boxes).

Stabilised quilt — Coffee and TimTams is a 5×5 grid of squares measuring around 6″. The quilt is 47″ square

Working up the Daisy Motif

The process of stabilising the quilt thankfully helped me feel more connected to the quit and able to decide how to proceed. One of my priorities was to leave the quilt feeling soft and comforting. Eventually I decided that I wanted to fill the the boxes with a simple flower motif. Before I attempted this though, I did two things. Firstly, I mocked up a digital example on Inkscape software to see what it might look like.

Digital trial of daisy motif — I started with photos of two representative blocks. Then I drew a basic circle and petal design. Finally I decided to fill in the centre spiral and place a line in the centre of each petal.

Secondly, once I was happy with this design, I got out a good old fashioned pen and paper to see how I could quilt the daisy motif as a continuous design.

First attempts at daisy motif — First: I tried drawing the petals and then filling in the centre in one pass. As you can see, it wasn’t a huge success. The petals aren’t nicely formed and the centres are jagged.

Second attempt at daisy motif — Next: I tried drawing the spiral centres first, then the petal outlines and then going back to fill in the petal centre lines. This is better, but the double outline is busy, and escaping the block looks messy.

Third attempt at daisy motif — This time I did the same as my second attempt, but just traced the original centre circle when I returned to add lines to the petals. Much simpler and tidier.

If you would like to learn this design by first tracing it, you can download a free pdf of the daisy motif here: Daisy motif free printable.

Quilting the Daisy Motif

To get the daisy motif to show up better against the mildly busy fabrics of this quilt I opted for a rayon (40wt) thread in antique white for the top thread. In the bobbin I had 80wt cotton/poly thread.

Step One: use chalk to mark thirds on the centre fabric of the block. Quilt the stem of the daisy and the centre circle. Fill in the spiral now, if you want one.

Step Two: Quilt the petals clockwise out to the edge of the block. Stop each petal just short of block edges and the centre circle – this looks neater than accidentally crossing the lines.

Step Three: Once all the petals are outlined, fill in the centre line of each petal by travelling anti-clockwise around the centre circle.

Step Four: If you have forgotten to do the spiral, you have another opportunity to fill it in now. Otherwise, exit the block by completing the other side of the stem.

Finished daisy motif — The finished daisy quilting motif

A Bonus Variation of the Daisy Motif

In every second block, I didn’t add the centre spiral – so I have some open and some filled flowers. Truth be told, this is largely because I forgot to quilt the spiral into one of the flowers early on. Then I decided I liked the variation…. so now it’s a feature! Hahahahaha!

quilting spiral quilting In the sashing I did a simple leaf vine with the same thread combo. It is very nearly invisible but it gives a good overall texture. I left the star fabric squares un-quilted and filled the outer border with quick perpendicular lines. And finally, I put spirals in the four corners to echo the flower centres.