Best Fronds Modern Edge to Edge Quilting Design

Longarm League member Rebecca Grace Quilting (if you like reading quilting blogs, you'll love Rebecca's!) sent me an email a while back with a photo of home dec fabric, noting the design would make a great digital pantograph design.

I agreed wholeheartedly and tucked it away in my brain to think about later. You see, being the "Commish" of the Longarm League means that 95+% of the time, I'm working on all things other than designing pantographs. I love this part of the job, though, and hope to devote more time to it in the future.

 The leafy design was very appealing to me, but the biggest problem was that I could NOT figure out what portion of the design I could repeat to get the overall effect. It took a few days of playing around in Art and Stitch and doodling on my Remarkable tablet to crack the code.

Once that code was cracked, the other major dilemma was to figure out how to sequence the stitch path so that it'd make "nice" lines. It was pretty clear that I'd need to stitch portions of some lines twice, but the way the machine head moves also makes a difference in how smoothly it stitches out.

You can check out the video at the top of this post to see how the lines are formed going in a circuitous loop to form the frond shapes. The backtracking (or overstitching) happens pretty quickly after the initial line is stitched. When this happens, the likelihood of the two lines matching up closely is high.

In the end, I was very happy with the stitch path. It's always nice when you don't have to watch your machine stitch out like a hawk. I feel like it doesn't take too long to stitch out and the density isn't too over-the-top.

Here's how I set up my Intelliquilter using a baby-sized sample in the photos (40" x 40" quilt size):
Row height: 5"
Gap: -4.259"*
Pattern height: 9.259"
Offset: 50%
Backtracking: some

*Gap refers to the space I'm allowing between rows. This is a measurement that's quantified in the setup screen for IQ, so I like to include it for other Intelliquilter users.

The row height PLUS the noted gap amount totals the pattern height. If you don't use Intelliquilter, you'll likely want to start sizing with the pattern height number and adjust the spacing between rows to your liking. I set the default size of the design itself to 9.259" high to replicate what the sample shows. 

Here's a look at the included PDF:

If you use Best Fronds on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #bestfrondspanto and tag @longarmleague on Instagram so we can see what you're up to! 

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