Orange Dream Digital Quilting Design

I love a classic Orange Peel moment! This design is a simple variation on a classic that adds a touch of sass... as long as sassy and elegance can coexist.

Let's face it, one of the reasons why Orange Peel quilting works so well is because it's simple and extremely versatile.

You could easily use this design on modern tops or traditional tops and it'll look great on both. In fact, I think the classic design is made a touch more modern by having the echoed "peel" within each shape. And when used on a traditional quilt top, I think that's when it could read a bit fancier.

I could also see this design lending itself well with floral-themed quilts.

Another major benefit of this design is that it's multi-directional. It's going to look the same whether you load your top sideways or not. If you are trying to save time and capitalize on efficiency, loading the long side of the quilt to the leaders will mean advancing and re-aligning fewer times.

As for set-up, there is no offsetting required. Depending on your equipment, you may not even have to make any adjustments when it comes to the rows—it'll look best with no spacing between the rows.

Sample shown in the examples (45" x 50"):
Row height: 4.0"
Gap: 0"
Pattern height: 4.0"

I use an Intellquilter as my computer system, so your terms might differ.

There is a decent amount of backtracking needed to travel from motif to motif. Watch the video at the top of this post to view the stitch path.

Sequentially, the re-stitching happens quite soon after the original segment is stitched. What this means for you is that that the 2nd time a segment is stitched, there isn't much movement or shifting that can occur in the interim and the lines look pretty darn clean.

The downfall of backtracking is that if you have to unpick stitching, it's not going to be very much fun x 2. It's not like half of the design is double-stitched... but still, you know what I mean.

I admit it, I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to my stitching speeds, but I was able to run this edge-to-edge design a bit faster than others and it still looked crisp and clean! For reference: I usually run my Intelliquilter at 1.2 inches per second, but this one I bumped up my speed to 1.5 and "we" did just fine! 

Because there isn't a whole lot of wiggle room between the rows, I like to pin my backing to the take-up canvas instead of using my Red Snappers. As I roll/advance, the quilt stays straight whereas the higher profile of the Red Snappers can sometimes get in the way.

Here's another tip that was very useful when stitching this design. After each row (stitched left to right), I tugged the edges out in an attempt to counteract the fabric draw. This worked well because I didn't even have to use my Tweak function! :) 

Read even more tips about quilting digital designs that require precision placement.

The default sizing for this design is 4", which means the top peels are 2" and the bottom peels are also 2". This creates a naturally unquilted area of about 2 square inches in between the stitching. For this reason, I personally wouldn't want to size this design too much larger, but that's because I don't like to have large unquilted areas. I don't know if I could sleep at night if there were bigger unquilted areas... but this is my issue. It's my burden to bear. 😆  Quilt according to your own conscience.

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

The name for this design comes from a classic Zeigler family joke. One year as my kids were making Christmas wish lists, our youngest son wrote this list:


Do you know how some moments just stick in your memory? We've chuckled about this list a lot in the last five years. The "chikin" in a cage was not a game like we suspected, but he wanted an actual chicken in an actual cage. It's not like we're farmers or anything, so this one threw us for a loop. Also, we weren't sure what Orange Dream was on the list... perhaps an Orange Dreamsicle? It remains unclear, but we were glad that he crossed off fish in a tank because we'd already been down that road as a family and it didn't end well.

When I was brainstorming a name for an Orange Peel variation, I came to Orange Dream pretty quickly. 😉