Goth 2 Boss Digital E2E Quilting Design

I feel like I owe you an explanation for the name of this design. That will be coming soon.

But first, I thought I'd tell you the inspiration behind it. Back in December of 2021, Josh and I were watching the series called Landscapers that had recently premiered on HBO. It is based on a crime set in the 1990s in England. The series is visually moody, drab, and dark. There's a scene in an upstairs bedroom that had deep red, ornate wallpaper and I found myself asking Josh to stop and go back to a frame that showcased the wallpaper better. 

This is what caught my eye.

While it's definitely not the same, this was my first sketch from the inspirational wallpaper:

After playing around with the design a number of times on my reMarkable tablet, I slowly let the feathers get plumper and more prominent as part of the design, allowing me to fill in the space more evenly while keeping the floral center.

Here's how the design evolved as I was sketching:

When it comes to feathers, I feel most comfortable drawing them first and allowing them to be more organic than what I can achieve by going straight to the design software (I use Art and Stitch). I can select one repeat and copy/paste that motif over and over again to set a sense of how it'll look repeated across a quilt top.

At this stage of the drawing, I imported the sketch into Art and Stitch and began creating the vectorized artwork, tracing my own drawing lines and making slight changes as I progressed.



But none of this explains why this design is called Goth 2 Boss, does it?

My working title for the design was Landscapers as I was editing it, but when it came time to officially deciding on a name, I thought we could "do better". Goth 2 Boss came to mind because of another tv show called The IT Crowd. Where would we be without tv? 

Has anyone else watched it? The IT Crowd is another British show, but this time a comedy. My hunch is that it wasn't super popular in America. It would have originally aired from 2006-2013. I believe the series is still available on Netflix now if you want to check it out. 

One of the characters Richmond (played by Neil Fielding - who might now be best recognized as a presenter on The Great British Baking Show) is a goth who seemingly lives in the basement of a corporate office building. This "infomercial" appears in the show and we still laugh about it: Goth 2 Boss.

So, given the design was originally inspired by British wallpaper, and add in the ornate "gothic" style of the design, and couple it with a family favorite joke from a beloved television series, and it doesn't take much more to connect the dots. 

At least in my head. :)




Here are the specifications for how I set up this design using my Intelliquilter on a baby-sized quilt sample (40" x 50" quilt size):

Row height: 10"
Gap: 0"
Pattern height: 10" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: 50%
Backtracking: some

If you'd like to set this design up without offsetting/staggering every other row, that's fine, too. See which look you prefer when you import it into your computerized system.

Here's a look at the included PDF:

The rows don't nest with the rows above or below, which makes placement/alignment easy. Because there's more detail, the only conceivably "tricky" thing might be allowing more time to stitch out a detailed design. And if you run out of thread, you might want to restart at a point that doesn't have backtracking. Other than that, you should be good to go!

If you use Goth 2 Boss on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #goth2bosspanto and tag @longarmleague on Instagram so we can see how you use it! You can also visit our full digital design shop to take a look at all our previous designs.

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