Echo Quilting Designs – Free Motion Quilting for Beginners

Building on last week’s post about echo quilting, this week we will talk about creating designs with simple shapes and echoing. Now that you’ve practiced a bit and have that skill in your toolbox.  These echo quilting designs work well for both Edge-to-Edge and background fills. It just depends on how large or small you quilt the design.

Let’s dive right in!

Like I said, start with a simple shape (remember those 5 basic shapes?)

Peacock Feathers

There’s a design called Peacock Feathers. You start with a teardrop shape.

Then echo it.

Echo it again.

Right from where you end come out with another teardrop shape. Then echo it twice. My mantra for this design is teardrop-echo-echo-teardrop-echo-echo…… Read this post to find out how mantras can help while quilting.

Pro Tip: You can control the direction the design takes by which way you quilt that first teardrop. The side the first teardrop ends up on, is the side you will end on after two echos.

If I quilt the next teardrop the same way I quilted the first two, I will end on the right. When I switch directions, I will end on the left and I can travel in that direction to fill my space.

Continue with teardrop-echo-echo to fill up your space remembering to switch directions to get where you want to go.

If you get stuck in a corner (because you got distracted) simply add another echo.

When there is a small space to fill that will not accommodate the whole peacock feather, only do one echo.

Or just stitch a teardrop. No one will ever know!

You can do this large as an edge-to-edge design. Or small as a fill design behind appliques or larger quilting motifs. It is a fast and easy design to stitch.

And looks much nicer quilted.

Pro Tip: Do you see that blue line in the bottom right of the photo above?  That is blue chalk that has been washed 3-4 times with different concoctions. So the tip is: Only use white chalk for marking your quilts. Never use colored chalk! Or at the very least, test before you mark to make sure your marks will come out.

Can you think of other basic shapes that could make a nice echo quilting design? We’ll explore a few more next week!

by Mary Beth Krapil