Liquid Edge-to-Edge Digital Quilting Design

As I was working on this design, I kept thinking how similar it is to the Wishbone design. It may even look more like a wishbone than Wishbone?! My husband thought I should call it Tuning Fork, which would have also been an accurate description. I decided the one-word name 'Liquid' represented the flow and drip of the design.
 


This has been one of my favorite combos of quilt pattern + pantograph for quite some time! I can't help but have favorites.



I think the simplicity of this design gives it versatility and can be used in different styles of patchwork: contemporary, modern, water-themed, you-name-it. The curvy shape gives it an element of fun and playfulness.

The Quilt

Quilt Pattern

The pattern I used for this quilt is called Amelia by Crystal Manning. Once again, I was prepping for a retreat and needed some ideas of quilts to make before leaving. I believe I found this pattern while browsing on Pinterest, and my star-loving heart pitter-pattered with joy! 

I love how the pattern features a scrappy look, and the construction is very easy while looking like it has a touch of complexity. I had fun chain-piecing the blocks with my bright, happy fabrics and then laying them out to give the quilt a balanced look.

Fabrics

I went to Meg's Etsy shop Monograms for Makers to buy some fabrics for this quilt. I'll admit to adding a bunch of fun, bright prints to my cart without considering what I'd use for the five or six quilt patterns I'd hoped to make during my week away. Meg had this bundle (only 1 left at the time of writing) of coordinating prints to go with Melody Miller's Carousel line for Ruby Star Society that I added to my cart on a whim, only for it to show up prominently in this quilt.

Another happy accident was that I bought the background fabric, Water Pool Tiles in Natural, not realizing that I'd purchased it before. Between the two yardage amounts, I had exactly enough to use for the background. Even though it comes across as a solid white in the pictures, the subtlety of the print in person is delightful! 

The Backing

Silver Dapple Dots by Riley Blake strikes again! As long as I have a 108" bolt of this fabric—so help me, God—it'll be on most of my quilt backs. It's too easy. 

The Quilting Details

Difficulty Level

I gave this design an "Intermediate" rating regarding difficulty to use. This might be a surprise because of the simple look with no backtracking and no harsh pivots, but I had to babysit my machine to make it stitch out exactly the way I wanted it to.

The reason I had to babysit my machine was because of the deep nesting of the design between rows (like Wishbone, if you've ever used that design).

When I advance to a new portion of a quilt, I realign from a point in the middle. This means that when I start the new row of quilting, especially with dense quilting, I have to manipulate it slightly with my hands to make sure the first few repeats of the next row land evenly between the curves of the previous row. Quilts tend to shrink as you quilt them, making the perfect digital lines and spacing shown on your screen NOT perfectly fit the malleable, soft, and subtly shifting layers of the mounted "canvas".

In practice, what this looks like is the design being "off" at the beginning and ending of the row, but if you've realigned from the center, the center will usually be spot on. I've written about this in greater detail here, along with things to try to lessen the impact of the fabric layers drawing inward.

If you'd like to look at the stitch path, there's a video at the top of the blog post that shows how it travels.

Scale

When scaled at the dimensions given below, the spacing between lines is roughly 0.5" apart, with the widest part of the bottom of the Y shape slightly wider.

Here are the sizing specifications for how I set up this quilt using my Intelliquilter (72" x 72" quilt size):

Row height: 2.5"
Gap: -1.81" 
Pattern height: 4.31" (measurement from top to bottom of the repeat)
Offset: none
Backtracking: none

Here's a look at the included PDF:

Interested in getting new digital pantograph designs like this one on the day they're released (and at a deep discount)? Sign up for our Digital Panto Club and get them delivered directly to your inbox on the first Wednesday of each new month.