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Moving on in our series on free motion quilting this week to our next shape, spirals (or hooks). We can really have some fun with this shape. It works for so many quilts. Like a meander, depending on the scale you choose, it can create a fabulous all over edge-to-edge quilting design or a fantastic background fill. Spirals can be used in blocks and borders too. And they are great combined with other shapes to create gorgeous designs.
Looking good
Let’s think about what makes a spiral look good. That way, we will know what to strive for when we quilt them.
Round
When you look at this shape can you see why it was so important to practice stitching those circles? Spirals really look best when they are round.
Pro tip: If it has been a while since you quilted circles or round shapes, you can always go back to that practice fabric.
Do your 15 minutes today quilting around the circle shapes to refresh your muscle memory. Be like the major league baseball pitcher and warm up in the bull pen.
Consistent gaps
Spirals look really good when the gaps between the stitching lines are consistent.
Don’t get discouraged looking at these images. We are doing free motion quilting, not computerized quilting. What you stitch won’t ever be flawlessly perfect. And that’s perfectly OK.
That’s all you have to remember when stitching spirals. Round and consistent gaps. That’s it.
Getting started with spirals
Lets take it step by step.
Stitch a hook.
Continue on spiraling in a little.
Then turn around
Now follow the yellow brick road.
Split the path you created to go back out.
Continue by echoing around what you already quilted.
And you’ve got a spiral!
Using spirals
Fill a space, whether a block or a whole quilt.
When you hit an obstacle, like a seam line or another spiral, do some stitch-in-the-ditch or over-stitching to travel to where you want your next line of stitching. Sometimes you will have to imagine the path of your spiral outside of your boundary so that you will know where to pick up and continue the spiraling.
This may be enough for you to practice in your 15 minutes a day this week. We’ll pick up from here next week to explore more ways to spiral out of control!
by Mary Beth Krapil
Good info
Your series is ever so helpful, I am never sure where to start but you have been a great help and I can see some improvement by the day.
[…] Last week we got started with the spiral, hook or swirl shape. This week we will talk about another kind of spiral. I call it the backtrack spiral. Instead of spiraling in, and then splitting the path you created to spiral out, you will backtrack spiral back out. Or in other words, you will stitch directly on top of the stitching you just did, only in the opposite direction. They look like this: […]