Rich Girl Extended Width Digital Quilting Design

The Design

Are you familiar with "extended width" digital quilting designs? Usually, the standard files we upload contain one repeat that's multiplied side by side across and down the quilt by our software when in pantograph mode. With extended width designs, the design itself is typically around 100" wide—give or take—with any repeating sections "built in". If you are new to this kind of design, read more here (including specific info if using Intelliquilter). The main takeaway is that they need to be set up as a block pattern.

 Rich Girl is an extended width design that stitches out very quickly. The echoed lines are angled very subtly, but the diamond shapes that result amidst the lines give just the right amount of contrast in their open spaces.

This is a perfect design to use as an alternative to straight line quilting. It will unify a busy quilt top like straight lines do so well, but with a bit of added, low-key interest. 

As I was stitching this out, the design was reminiscent of the effect that woodgrain quilting has, only in this case in a geometric and UN-organic way. If you are looking for an organic alternative to this design, check out Driftwood. It's another extended width design that was the inspiration behind this design.

Similarly to the unifying effect that straight-line quilting has on busy quilts, simple designs like this are also wonderful for non block-based quilts. Perhaps if something non-traditional and modern comes through your studio, this design would be a great option!

The Technical Details

As I mentioned first thing in this blog post, knowing that this design is an extended width edge-to-edge design is super important because we set up these designs as a BLOCK in our software instead of as a pantograph or repeating design.

The design should import at 102" wide by 4" tall. Chances are, the quilt you'll be working on will be less than 102" wide, so you'll just clip/trim the portions you don't need off the side or sides. If you do need the design to go larger than 100", you can simply increase the scale of the design until you have the width you need. This will proportionally adjust the height of the rows accordingly, which should work out just fine on such a big quilt.

If your machine handles right-to-left sewing like a champ (I'm lucky that mine always has), you'll select the regular 'Rich Girl' file type in the format you need and then you're good to go. The stitch path will perform in the same way as shown above in my stitch-out video at the top of the blog post. Alternating rows makes this design very speedy to stitch out.

 
If your machine hates sewing right-to-left, you'll want to select the appropriate file type for your system with the title 'Rich Girl L to R'. This option will stop each line on the right, that way you can move your machine head back to the left to start the next line/row. It's not as fast or efficient as the original design, but if you're pulling your hair out with thread breaks, it'll be well worth it to use the left-to-right alternate file.

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

Row height: 4"
Gap: 0" 
Pattern height: 4" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: none

Here's a look at the included PDF:

Before I talk about the quilt itself, I thought I'd tell you why I named it Rich Girl. It's inspired from the song Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes by Paul Simon from the album Graceland. That album was in heavy rotation in my household while I was growing up and that's why the song kept popping into my head when I was stitching this out. The first English lyrics of the song are:

"She's a rich girl,
She don't try to hide it,
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes."

It's purely a [very nerdy] coincidence that the design released at the beginning of this month (May 2023) was Tread Lightly, also somewhat related to shoe tread. 🤷‍♀️

The Quilt

The quilt featured in this blog post is very special because my 13 year old son Jace made it!

This is the Perfect Picnic quilt, which was Ruby Star Society's Summer Sewalong project. I saw that my friend Kristen made one with her son, having him pick all the fabrics. It sounded like a great idea to me! 

Jace had never made a quilt before, so we took it slow and enjoyed the process. His color scheme was "computer glitch"... black, white, blues and pinks. Maybe the TikTok logo was a subliminal inspiration? 

He learned about contrast during this project. I made all of my fabrics available for him to use and based on his theme, we narrowed the options down. Because we included some light gray fabrics in our light values, we realized the pink fabrics we initially picked needed to be darker to give them the medium value we intended. 

Jace did almost all the work and loved ironing the fabrics (prior to cutting), but his favorite part was webbing the squares when he stitched the top together.

The first rows he seamed together were off in alignment. But after he finished, he was totally unbothered and didn't want to unpick the stitches. I even offered to take the stitches out for him if he wanted. He said that it would be a reminder that he didn't get it right the first time, but he'd be able to see the improvement as he went.

This was an object lesson in having a growth mindset, and that beats perfect intersections any day! 


Once he got the hang of it, he put his AirPods in and got down to business, just like his mom! :) It was so strange to hear my sewing machine humming right along without me near it. 

It took a few weeks for him to complete the top and then it had to wait about five months before I got around to quilting it. I wanted him to choose the design and he picked this one back when it was an unnamed sketch in my in-progress design folder on my computer.

This design would look fantastic as a vertically oriented design, like in the photo below. To achieve this look, you'd load the quilt backing and top with the long side attached to the leaders.


Of course, Jace wanted a soft minky fabric for the backing. We found this Cuddle in Baby Pink at Mashe Modern.

If you use Rich Girl on a quilt, we'd love for you to use the hashtag #richgirlpanto 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.

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