Pretty Petals Digital Quilting Design

I'm glad the time has come to release Pretty Petals into the world! As a designer, I can't help but have varying levels of excitement about the designs I work on. I'm sure this is totally normal with any creative job. I can't say this is my favorite design ever, but it's up there because of the overall texture it creates! 



What I like about the design is the relative uniformity of the lines and spacing throughout the top. It just makes my heart happy. I like that it produces interesting texture that you don't have to think too much about. I like that it creates a background of pleasant arc-shapes that'll allow the focus to be on the piecing.

Floral themes are common in quilting in both the fabric selections available and in the quilt patterns themselves, so I like that this digital pantograph has a floral element that should compliment a floral top.

I also like that this design would pass as an interesting geometric element to enhance a quilt top that has no floral elements whatsoever.

What I'm saying is that it's versatile! And we all know that the more versatile a design, the more times we use it, and the more we get our money's worth out of it.

I took a lot of close-ups of my sample quilt for this blog post so that you can see that I intentionally did not set up the petal "intersections" or rows to touch exactly. I did not want this to be a design that you have to micro-manage into perfection. When we pan out to look at the overall effect, our eyes really want to connect the arcing shapes anyway.

The goal here is close enough that it looks like the motifs fit together but NOT exact in a way that all the petals within and between the rows touch perfectly. They aren't meant to. I want you to see the little variations in my sample and know that's normal.





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: 4.5"
Gap: -2.216"
Pattern height: 6.716" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: some



Here's a look at the included PDF:

Take a look at the video at the top of the blog post to watch the stitch path. There is backtracking in the formation of each petal shape.

If you use Pretty Petals on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #prettypetalspanto 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 releases the day they come out? Sign up for our Digital Panto Club and get them delivered straight to your inbox on the first Wednesday of each new month.