Bell Tower Digital Quilting Design for Computerized Longarm Machines

This design called Bell Tower is our latest edge-to-edge digital pantograph with a modern, geometric theme.
 


Sometimes it's tough to pinpoint why I like or dislike a design, but I think the reason I like this one is the space between the shapes creates a "channel" that gives some visual oomph. 



If I look at this design long enough, it looks like a deconstructed orange peel, just don't ask me to explain how or why!



I chose to quilt this design on this quilt top because of the vertical orientation of both. I like how the soft curves of the panto add interest, as well.

The Quilt

It's a star quilt; what's not to love?

The pattern I used is called The Helen Quilt from Kitchen Table Quilting. You can find the PDF for sale here. I love the orientation of the stars and how they alternate between large and small. It was a great way to use the fat quarter bundle of Lazy Afternoon, a fabric line by Zen Chic for Moda. 

I used scrappy low-volume prints in white and cream for the star backgrounds and love the added dimension! 

I made a self-discovery while making this quilt. It's unimportant to the featured panto, but I'd like to share it with you anyway. I've decided I'm against making flying geese units, four at a time. It's not a new method for me, I'm just facing the facts that I can't get the accuracy I desire when I make them this way. So raise your glass, have a piece of cake, and join me in celebrating my retirement from the four-at-a-time life.

I understand why pattern designers write the instructions for four-at-a-time flying geese—it's time- and fabric-efficient. I started this quilt at a retreat, so perhaps that's why my units turned out so inconsistent and blech. I moved onto another project at the time because I was frustrated. When I got home, I ended up throwing a number of the flying geese units in the trash because I butchered the trimming so much and was going to have to resort to a 1/8" seam allowance to preserve some of my star points. 

Instead of four at a time flying geese, I'm going to use the "folded corners" or "snowball corners" method in the future, as I did for this quilt. I love using my special ruler for this. I started with a large rectangle of the background fabric, aligned a square of the star fabric to one side, pre-trimmed the corner using Doug Leko's Simple Folded Corners Ruler, sewed the seam, and pressed. Then I did the same process to the other side of the background rectangle to complete the flying geese unit. This method uses more fabric, but I always sew the discarded corners into new half-square triangle units to be used in future projects. The extra fabric and time are worth it because the geese turn out perfect every time, and you don't have to trim afterward! 

Here are my extras that will go into an epic scrap project someday because I have a whole bag of HSTs like this from other quilts. 😇

Don't let my flying geese quirk fool you; The Helen Quilt is a great pattern. I enjoyed making it and would even make it again! I love Kitchen Table Quilting patterns (like this Plaidish 2 one).

I was so excited to use the print shown below for the backing! It's a Ruby Star Society wide back (Starry in Natural), designed by Alexia Abegg. I ordered it from Doodle Quilting Studio. It's 100% cotton with a soft sateen finish, and it's super cute!

The Quilting Details

I gave this design an "Intermediate" rating as far as difficulty to use. For the pattern to look consistent row-to-row, it needs to be aligned accurately, and there's only a small margin of error. If you are having problems with the alignment of any design, we have a blog post with some techniques you can try to improve accuracy (and explain why it happens in the first place). 

When setting the Bell Tower design up in your software, you do not need to offset or stagger the rows. You will need to decrease the gap between rows until there is a small space but do not close the gap so much that the rows touch.

There is some backtracking when forming the triangle motifs, but because the backtracking occurs immediately after the line is stitched, it's very "clean" and should not be visually noticeable. There's a video at the top of the blog post that shows the stitch path.

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this quilt using my Intelliquilter (65" x 77" quilt size):

Row height: 4.0"
Gap: -1.405" 
Pattern height: 5.405" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: some

Here's a look at the included PDF:

If you use Bell Tower on a quilt, we'd love it if you used the hashtag #belltowerpanto and tag @longarmleague on Instagram so we can see how you use it! 


Interested in getting new digital pantograph designs like this one on the day they're released (and at a deep discount)? Sign up for our Digital Panto Club and get them delivered directly to your inbox on the first Wednesday of each new month.