Cross-Stitched | Digital Quilting Design for Computerized Longarm Machines

I released a digital pantograph called Plus last summer (shown in the next image). Leading up to the release, I debated about which orientation to use for the little plusses because I was going back and forth between the up-and-down orientation of Plus and the diagonal orientation of today's release. I ended up deciding that they were different enough that instead of either/or, we could have both! The right time—or rather quilt top—came along, and I thought the diagonal version would look great on it, so here we are today.

Plus:

More on the quilt top in a minute, but the 45º angles of the star patchwork in this quilt was what made me think Cross-Stitched would be a good fit for the quilting.
 


The small-scale of the pantograph design lends itself well to creating a texture-rich backdrop. There have been a number of times when I look at the effect of the quilting, and my brain wants to think that circles are part of the design, even though they aren't. I also pick up subliminal chevron shapes.



Pantograph designs do not have to be complicated to be effective. Sometimes less is more... and sometimes more is more! Different types of designs for different applications. There is something so satisfying about simple, repeated shapes forming a beautiful texture. In this case, the pattern reminded me of cross-stitching with embroidery floss, as was my obsession very briefly in the early-2000s.

The Quilt

Quilt Pattern

 The pattern I used for this quilt is called Charm Chain Stars by Ashlee Doyle of Crinkly Quilts. I believe I had the fabric first, and then saw the pattern and thought the two components would go together wonderfully! 

I knew I was going to work on sewing this quilt top at retreat and so the large nine-patches and simplicity of the pattern was very appealing to me. It went together without a hitch; it was a thoroughly enjoyable make.

Fabrics

The solid blue fabric featured in this quilt is a Bella Solid called Indigo that I ordered from my friend Meg at Monograms for Makers. She carries all the Bella Solids and has great photos in her listings, often showing what the fabrics look like in relation to the other Bella Solids. It's very helpful! 

And now a brief digression:

About a year ago, my Reliable Maven iron broke. I liked it while it lasted, but it didn't last much over a year and a half and was out of warranty by then. Because I hated the thought of throwing it away, I followed the advice from their customer service team and tried replacing its filter before I gave up on it. The filters were difficult to find because they were out of stock at a number of retailers, but I located a replacement filter at SewingMachinesPlus.com. I noticed they had some fabric bundles available, and perhaps to qualify for free shipping, I spontaneously added two bundles of Tilda fabric to my cart: the Tilda Classic Basic bundles in light blue and pink.

The fabric was shipped right away, but it took a while for the replacement filter to arrive because it turns out that was out of stock, too. When it finally arrived, the replacement did nothing to help the iron whose heating filament had gone out. To get it repaired was going to entail shipping it to Toronto, and the hourly repair rate was going to be more expensive than what I spent for the iron in the first place, so I ended up junking it. 

But the highlight here is that I got to try beautiful new fabric that I ordinarily wouldn't have purchased if not for my iron mishap! The fabric is so adorable, and it felt like it was very high in quality. I would buy Tilda fabrics in the future, for sure.

The Backing

I was in a hurry to leave for QuiltCon, and I wanted to take this quilt with me to display in our booth, so I chose a "boring" 108" backing fabric (Kona in Parchment) as a solution so that I could get on with the quilting already! I do like solid backings for the way they can't help but feature the quilting. But if given all the time in the world, I might have sourced a Shannon minky backing for this one because they get more use around the house than the standard quilting cotton backings and I want this one to get a lot of use because it's SO cute!

The Quilting Details

Difficulty Level

I gave this design an "Easy" rating as far as difficulty to use. There is no offset necessary. There is a small amount of backtracking, but it's extremely minimal. 

If you'd like to look at the stitch path, there's a video at the top of the blog post that shows how it travels.

Layout Option

You do have an option to use a 50% offset with this design. I wanted to show you what it will look like below, but also to let you know it will increase the difficulty of the quilting because the lines will need to be close to touching from row to row. You'll have to decide if the secondary design of the converging diagonal lines will be worth it. Perhaps it would give a more specialized look for the right quilt top? 

It's something to consider, anyway. When I quilted this design, I did not use the offset. I went with the easiest option and the one I feel most people will choose.

Scale

I'm a fan of small-scale quilting. I also thought that because the patchwork consists of relatively large pieces, it'd be best if the quilting was smaller. I will always try to avoid scaling the quilting to be the same or similar size as the patchwork. It looks better if they aren't competing, size-wise.

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this quilt using my Intelliquilter (54" x 67.5" quilt size):

Row height: 2.5"
Gap: 0" 
Pattern height: 2.5" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: some

Here's a look at the included PDF:

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