What is the Key to Memorizing Designs? 🧐

Published: Wed, 04/16/25

Updated: Wed, 04/16/25

Hi ,

How many quilting designs have you memorized so far? Much like writing your name in cursive or free hand, free motion quilting requires memorization to quilt designs by following some basic rules:

Quilt a wiggly line
Don't cross or overlap the line of quilting

These rules are just like the little rules that connect letters together in cursive writing. Once you practice a bit and memorize the steps, you can quilt a design anywhere, and in any size you like!

The rules for the design above are for stippling, the most popular and widely used free motion quilting design. A quilter emailed a great question about stippling this week:

I am brand new to quilting and have been watching your vides on Free motion quilting.  What marker/pen do you use to transfer your stippling design onto your fabric?
 Is there a template to purchase to draw this onto your fabric to follow this pattern?  Thank you!

This is a great question because quilting designs like stippling free hand takes practice. I have a few ideas in this newsletter that can help make memorizing designs much easier.

Longarm Quilting Bundle Sale

But first I'd like to share an awesome bundle sale we're running with Grace Company this month. This helps you save when you purchase a new longarm machine and quilting frame together:

Click Here to shop for quilting machines and check out the lower prices when you bundle a machine and frame together, and in some cases, you'll get a longarm and frame bundle that costs less than a machine by itself!

And FYI - higher prices are on the horizon. If you've been thinking about getting a longarm machine and frame and waiting for the right time, with the right sale, I honestly think these will be the lowest prices on our longarm machines and frames through all of 2025.

Ruler Quilting Accessories Included

LeahDay.com is exclusively offering an additional Ruler Quilting Kit with all Q'nique Longarms this month:

This free ruler quilting accessory kit includes:

Ruler base to fit your Qnique Longarm
3 Piece Hopping Foot Set, which includes a ruler foot
All 6 of my longarm quilting rulers: Slice, Super Slide, Mini Slide, Ditcher, Feather, and Circle

Click Here to find all of the Qnique longarm machines this accessory kit is included with this month. If you've been on the fence and thinking about it, this may be the month to spring into longarm quilting and get started with everything you need for ruler quilting too.

3 Steps to Memorize Free Motion Quilting Designs

There are three ways you can learn the basic rules to a free motion quilting design and gain the muscle memory needed to quilt them on any scale, on any style of quilt:

Drawing / Tracing the Design on Paper - If you can't quilt or draw a design yourself, try tracing it first! This Stippling worksheet is included in the Flower Festival Block 1 pattern:

By tracing the lines, you're learning the basic movements and patterns you can make within the stippling design. Even though this isn't quilting exactly, it's still a good step that can help your hands push the quilt (or roll the machine) in a similar path way.

2. Quilting on a Marked Line - You can also use worksheets like the one shown above to mark the designs on your fabric. I've been using these two fabric pens for years and still use them on almost every quilt.

Having a line to follow is very helpful, even for someone with years of quilting experience. The marked line tells you where to go and takes the guess work out of where you're going next.

Marking the design on the fabric and quilting on the marked line does work well and it's how I taught free motion quilting to beginners for years. The only issue is marking the fabric takes time and there is always a risk of the marks not coming out of the fabric.

Last year I came out with paper quilting stencils, which allow you to skip marking and get straight to quilting. We quilt along the lines marked on the stencil, stitching from edge to edge very efficiently to quilt rows of the design on our quilts.

Quilting on a Line over Paper Quilting Stencils

Over time, quilting on a marked line - either one you mark directly on the fabric or one you print and place on the quilt - helps you memorize quilting designs. Eventually you won't need to mark or use a stencil! You'll be able to quilt the design free hand, just from memory.

3. Quilt the Design A LOT - Repetition is the key to memorization. If you really want to be able to free hand quilt a design, quilt it a lot, draw it a lot. Doodle it on anything that will stand still long enough for you to stipple all over it.

While, yes, I've shared hundreds of different free motion quilting designs, you really only need to memorize one at a time. When you get bored with the one you've been quilting it's a sign it's time to learn a new design.

Isn't Following a Line Cheating?

Is following a line using a quilting stencil or marked line "cheating"?

No!

This is helping you form the design and quilt your quilt efficiently. It's not free hand quilting, technically, but you are still free motion quilting and you're learning a design - win, win.

The whole "cheating" thing is so silly anyway. It implies that we're taking a test and the quilters using modern techniques are doing it "wrong" while the slower, traditional methods are "right."

That is a massively limited viewpoint.

Personally I consider all quilting techniques free game, all quilting technology a necessary resource, and all materials interesting and fun to play with.

If it helps you memorize a quilting design, do it! The point if quilting is to make finished quilts so they can be cuddled with on the couch and enjoyed.

I hope this newsletter has inspired you to memorize a new quilting design this week. If you'd like to learn stippling, here is my Ultimate Stippling Quilting Tutorial, which features multiple styles of quilting to create this pretty, classic design.

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day

Leah Day, P.O Box 386, Earl, NC 28038, USA

Unsubscribe | Change Subscriber Options