Eight Beginner Quilting Designs

Published: Wed, 08/24/16

Hi ,

Thank you everyone for taking part in our anniversary sale and downloading our newest Bargello Video Workshop!

We love seeing all the new bargello quilts in our Facebook Group. Unfortunately it came to my attention only AFTER launching the workshop that I'd misprounounced the word Bargello (which should be Bar-Jello, not Bar Gello).

While that's a pretty embarrassing mistake, it doesn't stop this from being a terrific new workshop where you can learn lots of fun techniques.
Eight Fun Quilting Design Videos
Fern and stem
Back in 2009 when I began the Free Motion Quilting Project, I posted new machine quilting design videos every single day. To celebrate our 7th anniversary, I shared new machine quilting videos every day last week.

Design #4 highlights quilting the light green diamond in the Twin Rainbow Star Quilt. Click Here to find the free quilt pattern.

For #4 I decided to machine quilt Fern & Stem, a leafy design that will fill your quilt very quickly. This design is a great choice for machine quilting wide open spaces like the borders of a quilt because it fills so fast and with such a beautiful texture!

Flowing Feathers
The fifth machine quilting design is Flowing Feather Leaves, which I quilted into the dark green diamonds of the Rainbow Quilt. 


This free motion quilting design will be slower and a bit more challenging to quilt because of all the travel stitching involved with quilting the feather shapes and echoing the leaf shapes.

Take it slow and remember it's not a race and your darker green diamonds will be quilted before you know it!
Easy Poseidon's Eye
For Design #6 I machine quilted the blue diamonds of the quilt with an easy swirling design called Poseidon's Eye.


I received a great question about thread color. Robyn asked:
I have problems with is when the thread matches so well to the fabric, it's like driving blind. I can't see where I've been and where I haven't. How do I solve that?
The easiest way to solve this is to contrast your thread color with the fabric color. As you can see in my video, I'm quilting my Twin Rainbow Star quilt in white Isacord thread so it stands out on the quilt surface and I can see where I've quilted and where I'm going next.

And don't forget to check out the remaining design videos!


Twin Rainbow Quilt free pattern
Dancing Butterfly 
Dancing butterfly
If these designs have inspired you to either give free motion quilting a try or to pick up where you left off, our Dancing Butterfly Quilt Along project would be a perfect project for you.


The pattern is available in two formats: a digital, downloadable file which you receive immediately upon purchase in email, and a physical version we ship to you. The download version is on sale for $9.95 and the physical copy is also only $9.95, more than half off the usual $24.95 price.

Pictured at right is Renee B.'s finished Dancing Butterfly quilt.

You'll also want to join our Dancing Butterfly Facebook Group to get an idea of how pretty this quilt is. Quilters all over the world have made this quilt and shared their pictures, stories, and experience.

See you next week!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day