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...

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...