Fizz is so simple and versatile, it'll work on anything!



This is an extended-width pantograph design, which means one squiggly line will travel the whole width of the quilt and then will travel back right-to-left to complete the bubbles, baubles...? Melon shapes? What are we calling these? Chainlink, but cuter? ;)

The advantages of using this design:
1) No backtracking.
2) Stitches smoothly (no corners or pivots) and quickly.
3) Looks great in either direction — loading a quilt on its side can increase efficiency by not having to advance the quilt as much.

Potential disadvantages of using this design (hey, just being honest):
1) If your machine doesn't do well traveling right-to-left, you'll want to load the L to R version of the design which is included in the purchase. This means manually moving the machine head back to the left edge of the quilt for each line, like you would for straight-line quilting. Kind of a pain. But, even so - no backtracking is still an advantage.
2...

This is Flight.

It's a minimalistic version of a bird in flight. You can tell by the little beak leading the way. I wanted the tail feathers to look like they were nestled between the next row of birds so they got a bit of a scalloped edge.



Mainly, this is a fussless edge-to-edge pantograph design that will blend into the background but still provide interesting texture with its gentle curves and angles.

Remember the early 2010s and "put a bird on it"? Well, I'm a decade late, but I finally did it! 

If you had a quilt with bird fabric or bird elements like applique or piecing, this would be a perfect panto for it! But the nice thing about this design is that it will also serve as a nice texture without being bird-related at all. In fact, it might even be mistaken for acorns. I don't know, ask my husband. :)

The Quilt

This was a fun and fast quilt top to sew up, made with leftover scraps from other projects.

I'll include an image of the cutting instructions I made fo...

What started as a baseball diamond shape morphed into something that looked reminiscent of a graphic for America's National Parks. From there, I repeated the shapes at odd angles so that some secondary and tertiary diamonds emerged, but the "explore" feeling from an imagined poster never left.



What I like about this design is the graphic boldness of straight lines, angles, curves, and circles all playing together.

I found it funny that because I used such low volume AND extremely low contrast fabrics in this quilt, the quilting design pretty much swallowed up the whole quilt pattern! I was shocked by how little I could see the quilt pattern after quilting. Oops!

The Quilt

Believe it or not, this quilt is the Star Pop II quilt by Emily Dennis of Quilty Love. Here it is on my design wall before quilting as proof there were stars involved. Ha!

And then, after quilting:



To be sure, I knew that the patchwork would be subtle. It was intentional. This was a wedding quilt for a...

Ledger is a tricky design to execute and not for those who stress about perfection. How is this for a sales pitch?! But also? OMG, I'm in love with the modern-looking result! 

I like to be upfront about the degree of difficulty of a design because I'd hate for a beginner to get frustrated.



Ledger has a look you might only expect to see from careful walking-foot quilting on a domestic machine. But luckily—no basting, quilt wrangling, or taking it off the frame and re-mounting it halfway—is involved with this method.

I was feeling very ho-hum about this quilt top when I finished it at a retreat earlier this year, but after I quilted it, my excitement meter went up.

WAY UP! 📈  



I decided to experiment with grid quilting as an edge-to-edge design, building the grid "brick-by-brick". You can watch the video of the stitch-out at the top of the blog post to see what that looks like. 

I wanted to keep the longer lines of the rectangle free from backtracking, but doing it this way m...

Hello friends! I'm showcasing a bundle for you today. Instead of narrowing a variety of clamshell designs down to one, I've bundled them together so that you can have many options!

There are FOUR edge-to-edge designs included in the Clamour bundle:
Cat
Line
Dash
Bump


All of this started because the Des Moines flag inspired me. I live in the Des Moines metro area, and the flag below represents bridges in the city. I created a few simple clamshell shapes designed to have some spacing between the clamshells, one with a line traveling under the clamshells (or on top if you'd like to flip it vertically like bunting) and one with a short line between. In the bundle, these are represented by Line and Dash.

From there, I stumbled upon a variation that looked like cute cat heads in a simple and easy stitch path, so I knew I needed to include it too. We have a cat-friendly (cat-laden?) household, if you haven't met me yet. 👋

Let's talk about the Cat option now, because that's what I ...

Migrate is a digital pantograph design that came about as I played with the elongated, mirrored "wing" shapes you see here. Only after looking at it for a while did it remind me of a minimalist butterfly shape and that's where the name came from.

But you don't have to like butterflies to use this design on a quilt top! It's abstract enough to work on a lot of different styles. It would even work for a mid-century modern look.

There is some backtracking involved in this design, so if you're curious about that, watch the video of the stitch-out at the top of this blog post.

 

The Quilt

I have to admit, I pieced this quilt top specifically to test a different pantograph design. I loaded it up and quilted three rows of the intended design until I was sure it was a no-go. Sometimes my ideas on the computer don't quite translate well to real-life applications. It's a bummer, but that's life. That means more tweaking is needed until I'm happy with the design or it'll get scra...

Tread Lightly is named as such because of an embossed design I came across on Pinterest that looked like shoe tread... I don't think it was, but it very much could be, don't you think? 

'Tread lightly' is also a key phrase used in a pivotal moment in the series Breaking Bad. Since we watched that series again with our teenagers recently, it was fresh in my mind. Oh boy—on the last watch-through, I really hated Walter White! But that's a topic for another day.
 

Oh yes, back to "shoe tread". This design is sort of like a simplified serpentine meander with a well-placed circle within each shape. The alternating blob directions—pointing up and then down—make for an interesting way to fill space and result in easy-to-nest rows.

It's always nice to have some wiggle room when realigning an edge-to-edge design.

The design is quirky and fun and would be great for kids quilts or any modern top. I was so excited to use it on this vintage top that was gifted to me—it very much fits t...

First thing's first. It's pronounced shandy.

I didn't want to spell it with an "s" because I think the descending circles give off big chandelier energy and wanted to maintain that attribute as part of the name. Also, I believe there are other chandelier named pantographs, so Chandy seemed like a fun way to distinguish this one.

As far as other design attributes, this pattern features repeated lines at opposing angles and at different intervals that provide interesting texture. Throw in some circles, and you get a dynamic result! 

The interplay of the rows is central to the design, so make sure to read the technical details before using this digital pantograph.



True story: I stitched probably a good 20" of another design (that I'll release soon) on this quilt before I decided it was all wrong and unpicked everything. It actually could have been cute at a smaller scale, but against the simple shapes of the patchwork, I felt the quilting needed a bit more oomph. That's wh...

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...

Always is a new digital pantograph design that is a breeze to stitch out. The curvy contours of this shape work so well in providing a pleasant contrast with the straight lines and angles of most patchwork.



There's a retro feel to this design, too, but will fit the "mood" of many contemporary or modern quilts.

The Name

You might know from reading my previous blog posts that I often use a working title for designs before they get released and need a "real" name. Well, the working title for this one was Lightdays because of the shape resembling a pad. And well, growing up I could count on that particular brand being tucked away in the bathroom cupboards, so that's what my mind went to. My sister thought this was hysterical when I texted her the design with the name, and that's all that really matters. 😂

But obviously I couldn't actually use Lightdays as a name. I didn't want it to be THAT obvious or cause anyone to avoid using the pantograph because of the name. I asked my fr...