Each month, we are sharing multiple ways to quilt our Online Quilting Bee Skill Builder Blocks. When I’m creating a quilting plan, I always start with a picture and doodle with a pencil. This allows me to try lots of different ideas without much time commitment. Doodling is also one of the best ways to practice free motion quilting. It helps with muscle memory and finding a quilting path.
Quilting Plan 1
This first quilting plan creates a continuous ring around the center shape. I started with straight lines echoing the octagon around the center square. Next, I put some wishbones in the outer triangles. I really like using wishbones to fill shapes as they are very versatile and easy to do on domestic machines as well as longarms. After that, I used curved arches along the green triangles. That left the squares, a simple echo and fill ties them all together. I chose to fill the outside with close lines to vary the density and really make the yellow squares stand out.
Quilting Plan 2
For this quilting plan, I did curved arches on both sides of the square in a square blocks. This is a great motif to do as a continuous line. Some nice straight lines draw the attention to the center star. To really make it stand out, I opted to echo the star multiple times. Some dense fill on the inner star highlights that shape. I finished the block with a dense fill on the yellow squares as well.
Quilting Plan 3
I really liked the frame around the center square. I wanted to use a different quilting motif and opted for wishbones. Some straight lines on the green triangles give a nice contrast and draw your eye to that center shape. I opted to keep it simple and used the same dense fill in the center square and yellow squares. An echo around the squares helps highlight the shape and sets it apart from the other pieces.
Full Quilting Plan
I really like this full quilting plan as there are lots of different ways you can pull out shapes and break up the space. I recommend really playing with the different options and seeing what you like the best. When picking quilting motifs, choose ones that contrast with each other, either straight lines with curves, or switch up the density. This will bring interest and help differentiate between the different shapes.
Click on the blocks below to print out a copy to sketch on. Try some of the ideas we shared, or come up with your own.
Music by bensound.com
