Wishbone History

Do you know how long I've been meaning to write a blog post about Wishbone? Well, I started this draft in August of 2020. The design was a few years old by that point.

Wishbone is the first design I ever released to the public in September 2019, mere weeks after the Longarm League membership started for the first time. I designed it the prior year due to the frustration of not being able to find a design simply referred to as 'Loops' by some Statler Stitcher owners I followed on Instagram.



I spent hours combing the Internet with the intent to buy the looped design, but resorted to making a version of my own when I couldn't locate it. This gave me a chance to use my Intelliquilter's editing tools to create the must-have elements that I wanted: 60º angled lines and meaty "teardrop" shapes that would nest with the rows above and below.

The resulting design lived on my tablet for a long while until I bought Art and Stitch software and was able to export it, s...

This is Sketch! Up until very recently, I'd planned to name it Cottonwood but when I discovered that's already another designer's pantograph name (with a related hashtag). I decided to go off-script and name it something unique.



The only trouble with having a really abstract design that could look like one hundred things and also nothing? Naming was hard. Why does it seem that I either have great name right away or I'm stress-listing stream of consciousness options and calling on friends and family for help? There's no in-between!

What I like about this design is that it's much more abstract and off-kilter than designs I normally create. There's a fun energy to this design—a bit folksy and quirky. I'm ordinarily not one to use negative space when it comes to pantograph designs, but I have to say that I like the organic-looking spacing of the motifs between the rows with this design. It looks more free-flowin', like a sketch!

I also like that the overall texture reads as ro...

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 element...

Volunteer is a simple, uncomplicated edge-to-edge quilting design meant to create an interesting and bold texture.
 

In fact, 'Bold' was the working title of this design as I was saving and re-saving different options along the way. I also briefly considered naming it Lots of Love, but thought that might be too confusing. It looks a bit like LOL, and in the early days of the Internet, people on message boards couldn't decide if LOL stood for Laugh Out Loud or Lots Of Love. 

In the end, I thought Volunteer works as a name because it looks like a person raising their hand. And I like one word names that haven't already been used for other E2E designs.

I think this quilting design would be great for modern-looking, geometric or graphically bold quilt patterns or fabrics. Or perhaps a child's quilt!

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: 2.797"
Gap: -0.743"
Pattern ...

Now that my day job is supporting the Longarm League membership and teaching new longarm quilters how to start a business, I need to be extremely intentional about setting time aside to feed my own creativity or it does not happen.

After a 4-year hiatus, my passion for piecing was reignited this year after being invited to a retreat at Stitch Supply Co. in Altoona, Wisconsin. It was glorious! The desire to plan, cut, and sew a quilt top has stuck with me since retreat. I'm drawing the distinction here between piecing and quilting because I frequently quilt samples of new digital edge-to-edge designs, but that isn't the same feeling as creating patchwork.

It's safe to say, patchwork and I are back "on" again.

The Patchwork

For this project, I started with a palette in mind. I pulled scraps from bins of pink, orange, yellow, and blue. I decided to work with the teal-y blues although I did let some darker royal shades pass through my filter.

I originally planned to make a lot of ha...

I feel like I owe you an explanation for the name of this design. That will be coming soon.

But first, I thought I'd tell you the inspiration behind it. Back in December of 2021, Josh and I were watching the series called Landscapers that had recently premiered on HBO. It is based on a crime set in the 1990s in England. The series is visually moody, drab, and dark. There's a scene in an upstairs bedroom that had deep red, ornate wallpaper and I found myself asking Josh to stop and go back to a frame that showcased the wallpaper better. 

This is what caught my eye.

While it's definitely not the same, this was my first sketch from the inspirational wallpaper:

After playing around with the design a number of times on my reMarkable tablet, I slowly let the feathers get plumper and more prominent as part of the design, allowing me to fill in the space more evenly while keeping the floral center.

Here's how the design evolved as I was sketching:

When it comes to feathers,...

In our Longarm League private community, we have a forum where we can ask each other for pantograph suggestions for clients' quilts. Over and over again, I find myself recommending really simple designs like straight lines, Good Vibrations, Rumble, Wishbone, Soho, etc.

I wanted to make a REALLY simple design that also looked... organic. Blackbird is what resulted.

I simultaneously really like this one and am—what's the word, embarrassed?—by its simplicity.

Hey, they don't all have to be head-scratchers. You know, those designs that you have to stare at to find the repeat or are mesmerized by the complexity of the design. This one is pretty darn straightforward.

I'll give you four great reasons why we shouldn't shy away from offering simple designs to our clients:

1. FAST - I loaded up this up baby quilt and stitched it all out in an hour's time.
2. EFFICIENT - My machine uses the smaller L bobbins and this took less than one bobbin.
3. PROFITABLE - The faster and more...

Longarm League member Rebecca Grace Quilting (if you like reading quilting blogs, you'll love Rebecca's!) sent me an email a while back with a photo of home dec fabric, noting the design would make a great digital pantograph design.

I agreed wholeheartedly and tucked it away in my brain to think about later. You see, being the "Commish" of the Longarm League means that 95+% of the time, I'm working on all things other than designing pantographs. I love this part of the job, though, and hope to devote more time to it in the future.

 The leafy design was very appealing to me, but the biggest problem was that I could NOT figure out what portion of the design I could repeat to get the overall effect. It took a few days of playing around in Art and Stitch and doodling on my Remarkable tablet to crack the code.

Once that code was cracked, the other major dilemma was to figure out how to sequence the stitch path so that it'd make "nice" lines. It was pretty clear that I'd ne...

You know what they say about April showers... they bring May Flowers!

April was a dreary, wet month where I live in Central Iowa and it's actually continuing into the first few days of May. But we have hope that sunshine and flowers will appear very soon!

I really love Scandinavian design and I hope that comes across in this simple tulip-esque pantograph. To jazz it up just a bit, I added a scalloped edge to the repeat. It should be a great choice for the upcoming spring quilts in your queue. 

May Flowers could be used both on traditional and modern quilts—the scale is adaptable, as well. I'll give you my details for this sample below.

 
Here are my specifics using a baby-sized sample in the photos (45" x 45" quilt size):
Row height: 3"
Gap: -1"*
Pattern height: 4"
Offset: 50%
Backtracking: none

*Gap refers to the space I'm allowing between rows. I use an Intelliquilter for my computerized quilting, and because that measurement is quantifiable, I provide it here.

The row h...

This is not a drill. I was able to work on a quilt top I started making for myself back in 2017.

About a month ago, I was invited to a quilting retreat at Stitch Supply Co. in Altoona, Wisconsin. I had the best time! It really supercharged my desire for patchwork again. Now I want to finish WIPs and start new projects with the fabulous fabric I bought there.

For this project, the quilt pattern I used is called Mini Modern Heart. It's actually a foundation paper piecing block I designed to use up small scraps of fabric. It certainly is a good pattern for doing just that!

My original intention was to make one block per day for a year—but, you know—life happened and I came up WAYYYY short of my goal.

At the retreat, I decided to wrap-up the project once and for all. I abandoned my original plan (365 blocks) when I realized that I had enough blocks to make a nicely sized lap quilt.

And guess what?! I ended up with 11 columns of 13 blocks each, which is drumrolllllllll... 143 ...