A Curly, Spiral E2E Digital Quilting Design called Perm

I've always wanted to make my own version of "hand-guided" spirals to join the ranks of Feathered Spirals, Fancy Feathers, Echoed Swirls, Fossilized—designs I used to free-motion quilt before I had my computerized machine.

This was the first design that I drew on my iPad (using the Graphic app), then imported into Art and Stitch to "clean up". The most difficult part of that process was getting the rows to nest the way I wanted them to. After many, many iterations, I'm happy with the design that's meant to look "perfectly imperfect," like free-motion quilting. 

I think that the larger and more varied the single repeat is, the more a design looks organic. For these kinds of designs, my goal is that the design repeats and rows are difficult to find. :) 

I named it Perm because the spirals reminded of the curly hair look in the late 80s and early 90s! The one and only perm I got was a "spiral perm" at a local beauty school when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. My mom took my sister and me for the magical treatment, and I swear we were there for the whole day. Sun up to sun down. I felt so fancy when my transformation was complete (I'm the brunette).

You can use this design on any quilt top that could use some curvy texture. Echoed curves always make a big impact! I think this would also be a good choice for quilt tops that use bright, "fun" fabrics, as this pantograph design has a whimsical quality. Scrap quilts that need help achieving a cohesive look would also benefit from a quilting style like this.

The Quilt

What could make a classic log cabin quilt better? Adding stars, of course! 

I knew when Emily Dennis of Quilty Love released this quilt pattern called Log Cabin Stars, it was for me.

I had a lot of fun sewing it together and posting pictures of my progress on my Threads account. I made the stars out of different pink fabrics, but set them off with the same solid white background. Then, I used a limited palette of teal and blue fabrics for the logs, with a punchy yellow and a stripe fabric thrown in.

Like many of Emily's patterns, I could see myself making this one again. You have so many options and fabric combinations available for the stars, backgrounds, and logs. The pattern makes it very easy to customize.

I didn't have a backing purchased for this quilt like I sometimes do, so I pulled various gray yardage and pieced it together. Let's be honest—I could use more opportunities to use the fabrics I have instead of buying new.

The Quilting Particulars

I rated Perm as an "intermediate" difficulty level. It's dense by nature, so you'll want to watch out for fabric draw-up, which is the shrinking-in effect that can sometimes happen with dense quilting.

Another factor that impacts difficulty is the spacing between rows. With this design, the quilting shouldn't be touching the adjacent rows, but the spacing should be close enough to mimic the spacing within the rows. Remember, we're trying to make the quilting (rows) look as seamless as possible.

If you need more information about placing tricky designs, consult our blog post here - it should equip you with new ideas to try.

Now that I've covered a few light cons, here are the pros: no backtracking and no offsetting is required. There's a time-lapse video of the stitch out at the top of the blog post, if you'd like to get a general sense of the stitch path.

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this sample quilt size using my Intelliquilter (63" x 74" quilt size):

Row height: 11.528"
Gap: -2.53" 
Pattern height: 14.059" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: none

Here's a look at the included PDF:

If you use Perm on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #permpanto 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.

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.