Leafy Bloom Digital Quilting Design

For this new design, I wanted to explore a geometric and simplified version of a flower. In general, I'm not into flowers or gardening, so I really have no idea if it looks like anything existing in nature. Also, please don't hold that against me! It feels like I'm violating a sacred quilter's code or something. Quilting and gardening seem to go hand in hand.

What I do really like, however, are simple repeatable shapes. I like the way the texture can recede into the background and be present, even when it doesn't have to be the star of the show.

Another thing I try to watch for as a designer is that the quilting is evenly spaced, giving a nice uniform texture to an edge-to-edge design. It's the little things like this that make me happy! 

This sample quilt size is approximately 45" x 50". For reference in scaling this design, the pictures here show a row height of 3.5". If you include the gaps between the rows, the total pattern height would be 4.167". That would mean that the gap amount is -0.667".  I use an Intelliquilter to stitch out my designs, so your terms might be a bit different. 

When setting up the design, I'm also offset every other row by 50% so that the motifs nestle in closely, but also provide some wiggle room so that the alignment between rows doesn't have to be exact.

There is a bit of backtracking involved. You can watch the video at the top of this post to watch how it stitches out. There are minimally overlapping stitches at the petal part. That IS what it's called, right? Petals? Remember, I don't know anything about flowers. ;)

Feel free to scale this design up or down according to the size of quilt top you have. It should be smooth sailing!

This E2E design would work well for quilts with a floral theme, to state the obvious. There are so many quilt patterns and fabrics that feature florals. I also think the simplicity lends itself well to juvenile quilts.

If you use this design, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #leafybloompanto and tag @longarmleague so we can see what you're up to!