Oil Spill Longarm Quilting Digital E2E Design

This is Oil Spill, a digital edge-to-edge design created for multi-directional movement!



I've always wanted to design a version of a serpentine meander. It was one of the first styles of free-motion quilting I fell in love with twenty years ago. With this design, I E-X-H-A-G-G-E-R-A-T-E-D all of the lines and curves to make it look distinct from "traditional meandering", but with the same idea at heart: varied shapes, random-looking, and not directional. 

I started playing around with this pantograph design in mid-2022 after my grandma asked me to quilt a vintage top containing "found" blocks. 

My grandma will be 91 next month. In the 1950s, when she and my grandpa were stationed at a military base in Arkansas, she was randomly given the Sunbonnet Sue blocks you see in the quilt below. Her mother (my great-grandma Estelle) added the interesting sashing made of recycled clothing.

So, yes. It's a Sunbonnet Sue quilt—and heaven help me—I've never liked the pattern. I know! It's probably an unpopular opinion (blasphemy?) to say, but I never understood why "we" did that as a nation of smart and savvy quilters in the early 1900s. 



I hope my quilting cred stays intact after admitting this publicly. Trust me; I feel worse saying this when the subject at hand involves my own personal quilting lineage. But this is more like a Psychadellic Sue quilt. It's so wild! And I love it for that reason. What is going on here?


The sashing is crazy, and I mean that in a crazy-quilt looking way. It is pieced in an unusual manner. The layers of fabric appear to have been cut with no rhyme or reason. It's possible they were foundation paper pieced, and then the edges were top-stitched by a machine really close to the fold. It's unlike anything I've seen before. The quilt grew on me with its uniqueness and spunk.

The Sunbonnet Sue blocks were really nicely done, with hand embroidery added to each. Dare I say, "cute" fabric combinations were used. And then the sashings came in super-hot 🔥 and changed the whole vibe of the quilt!

Seeing how much my grandma loved the way I finished it helped warm my feelings and attitude toward the quilt. I thought the "wild" meandering design I'd been playing around with for months would also be technically helpful in mitigating some of the fullness, which is so common with vintage tops. The design is somewhat dense without being overly so, and I like that the lines don't cross over each other. I experienced no puckering, so yay!

Back to present-day:


I made some slight changes to the pantograph design after using it on my grandma's vintage quilt and quilted it out again on this scrap quilt I finished last fall.

The Quilt

The pattern I used for the star quilt is called Sparkle. It's another pattern from Stashtastic! 2, a book by Doug Leko of Antler Quilt Design. Some of you might remember the Interwoven quilt I completed from the same book (I used our design called Cable Knit on it).

I found this pattern extremely forgiving in a number of ways.

1) When I cut my fabric scraps down to size, I didn't second-guess, edit, or fret about the colors. I started sewing it together while at retreat, so I didn't analyze any decision. I am very happy with how cohesive it looks in the end.

2) I believe Doug's example in the book shows the same fabric making up all the stars. I didn't have enough yardage on hand for that, so I picked out three dark, saturated fabrics to use instead. I think this worked just as well as having all of the stars look the same. Contrast is key here to help the stars stand out.

3) I really liked making wonky stars! I'd never used that technique before, and it was fun to forget about points being pointy or matching up with any other blocks. The star points are supposed to have mirrored wonky pairs, but as I mentioned before, I was sewing at retreat and not being careful. I ended up with some stars that weren't mirrored, and it's fiiiiiiiine, everyone is fine! 

I highly recommend the book and pattern!



Isn't the backing gorgeous?! I found it at Mashe Modern. It's from Anna Maria for FreeSpirit. The print is Brave Surprise, the colorway is Navy, and it's a wide back.

The Quilting Particulars

This digital E2E design is pretty standard. The default size is rather large, so if you have a smaller frame, you'll likely want to size it down so it fits within your quiltable area.

There's no direction with this pantograph, which can help you increase efficiency when you load a quilt on its side and let this stitch out in fewer passes.

There's a slight stagger within the design to help disguise the rows when it's stitched out, but you don't need to use an offset when you set it up with your software and there is no backtracking.

There's a video of the stitch out at the top of the blog post.

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this sample quilt size using my Intelliquilter (68" x 72" quilt size):

Row height: 12"
Gap: -2.117" 
Pattern height: 14.117" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: none

Here's a look at the included PDF:

If you use Oil Spill on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #oilspillpanto and tag @longarmleague on Instagram so we can see how you use it! You can also visit our full digital design shop to see all our previous designs.

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 straight to your inbox on the first Wednesday of each new month.