With Bee Block 10 finished, it’s now time to share ideas on quilting it! I have lots of fun shapes and elements to show this week that fit in these common quilt blocks.
Quilt Block Design 1
With this quilting design, I first started by creating the curved shape of the drunkard’s path in the opposite direction along each edge, creating a petal shape. On the inside circle, this gave me a fun area to fill. To really make that shape stand out, I first started by echoing it, then put a spiral design to fill the inside. Around that center circle and each petal shape, I would use straight lines to really offset the curves. I love to use straight lines in curved blocks to really add contrast and interest to the finished quilt.
Quilt Block Design 2
For this second quilting plan, I decided to echo around the circle shape and create concentric circles filling it in. After that, I liked the illusion of circles from the corner blocks and with the quilting turned them from an illusion to a completed shape. This design is simple but striking and I would use varying densities of quilting in the background to really make them pop.
Quilt Block Design 3
With this plan, I first echoed around each of the drunkard’s path blocks. After the echo, I would do a nice dense fill to finish off those shapes. In the center area, again I highlighted the center circle and echoed around it to make it stand out. A fun fill (use something with a different density than the outside areas) and of course more straight lines, and this quilting plan is complete.
Quilt Block Design 4
This design starts with a fan shape filling each of the outside sections. I like the fan design as it can easily be adjusted to fit the shape you need. Really take advantage of that and completely fill the drunkard’s path. On the inside, I used a fairly similar shape, but varied it to fit the space. After that a simple echo and straight lines to draw your attention to the center medallion and we are done!
Full Quilt Design 1
Whenever I’m planning a quilting design, I start by breaking up the space. With this plan, I first put the X in each of the square areas between the blocks. This creates a fun checkerboard pattern behind the blocks and is much easier to fill. I opted to leave every other square blank for lots of contrast and depth, but if the space is too big to leave empty you could also fill it with a denser fill or lines in the opposite direction to keep that contrast but not have spaces that are too large. After that, you could finish it out with most of the quilting plans we shared for the blocks and your quilt is done!
Full Quilt Design 2
For this final quilting design, I started with the concentric circles. After that, I noticed that the squares in between the blocks really stood out and I simply connected them. I chose to fill the rectangles with straight lines connecting the blocks and then a denser fill in the background with some pebbles. Both of these background designs would be denser than the spacing between the circles to make sure they don’t compete with the blocks themselves.
If you want to print out and practice or design some plans yourself, simply click on the blank blocks below and you can download and print the images. Print out a few copies and take advantage of the opportunity to play and see what you can come up with!
