Last week we learned how to piece a Dainty Dresden Plate quilt block with sixteen pointy petals. This week we're going to quilt our dresden plate block with free motion feathers, a marked leaf design, and more ruler foot quilting!

I designed this block with the quilting design covering two Dresden plate petals at a time so the designs could be larger with more space between the lines of quilting.

Click Here to find the pattern for Block #6.

I also think it looks really cool to have a design cross over two different colors of fabric. I noticed the quilting design stands out a bit better over the purple fabric and blends in a bit more over the green fabric.

This is one of those fun things you can experiment with quilting design - having some parts of the design contrast and other parts blend can create really interesting effects on your quilts.

Click Here to learn how to quilt it in this new video.

Last week I pulled out this old baby quilt and shared a video on quilting it with our new Clouds quilting design. I'm so delighted by how many quilters enjoyed this video and left sweet comments for James!

This week I'm quilting another corner of this baby quilt with Ocean Currents.

This simple quilting design flows through the space and because I quilted it with more space between the lines, it knocked out a lot of space in very little time.

They key with quilting Ocean Currents is to go with the flow. He he!

It is intended to be a flowing, organic design so it's a great choice if you're just getting started and echoing - keeping your lines a consistent distance apart - is not all that consistent.

In fact, I think the less consistent this design is, the prettier it looks.

I also used this quilting design in a butterfly from the Dancing Butterfly sampler quilt so you can use it to quilt over a whole quilt, or you can shrink the design to fit into smaller spaces like these butterfly wings as well.

Hello My Quilting Friends! Today we have podcast episode 22 and it's a wonderful interview with a quilting fiction author Frances O'Roark Dowell, the author of Birds in the Air and many books for children.

I learned about Frances and her books in an interesting way. Bonnie Hunter was reading Birds in the Air and tagged me in a post and said I popped into the book halfway through. Lol!

I had to pick up a copy and read it and yep, my book How to Piece Perfect Quilts helped the main character learn more about piecing. Other professional quilters were mentioned such as Carol Doak and the Dear Jane quilt project as well as quilting tools I've seen for years.

I felt this added a deep level of authenticity to the book which was so obviously written by a quilter who loves quilting. It was also fun to hear references to North Carolina, the state I've lived in my whole life.

Frances got into writing quilting fiction - stories about quilts and quilters - because she loved reading quilting fiction. I've definitely heard this about writing: write what you read. Whatever you're interested in, whatever makes you happy to read will also be the most fun for you to write.

I was flipping through my design journal the other day and I realized we have a lot of "Super" designs: Super Spiral, Super Daisy, and Giant Snail. I think we need more of these quilting designs because they're very easy and fast to quilt over any style of quilt.

This is one of those fun quilting designs that could be quilted with any style of machine quilting: free motion quilting, walking foot quilting, or ruler foot quilting. All three quilting styles can knock out this design quickly and easily.

I'm demonstrating this using free motion quilting, but if you'd like to see more tutorials showcasing the other styles of quilting on your home machine please let me know with an email!

Click here to view this new quilting tutorial.

Whew! That's it for this week. Remember to check out my friend Amy Johnson's Craftsy DVD Quilting Rulers on a Home Machine.

Until next week, let's go quilt.

Leah Day