(Photo above shows Echoed Swirls. There is only a tiny bit of backtracking found in this design.)

For the last several weeks, we've been answering questions submitted anonymously in our weekly email newsletter. Here is one question we received:

 

"I just stepped into the computerized long arm world. Waiting for the table extension pieces to show up. However, I hear long armers say, I didn't want backtracking on this quilt. So--why are the long arm patterns created with backtracking--and why would/wouldn't you want backtracking."

If you've ever browsed our design shop and noticed the words “no backtracking” on a listing, you might have wondered the same thing! Backtracking? Is that a bad thing? Should I be worried about it?

Backtracking itself isn't so bad. It's a tool used to accomplish designs that otherwise wouldn't be possible in a continuous format, without multiple starts and stops.


I've recorded a video at the top of this blog post that walks through five different designs, s...

I started playing around with a version of this design in 2022. I named it Willow in my original digital sketch because it resembled more of a willow tree to me. The sides descended further, and there was greater separation between the "leaves" and the "trunk". But I knew it was never quite right, so I kept making adjustments. I played around with making some nodes sharp and pointy, and then round, and then a combination. 



This design started working for me when I shortened up and tapered the sides, and smoothed out the top. Only, then it didn't look like a willow tree anymore, so it needed a new name.



Boho Bulbs draws on a simple, symmetrical, motif both oriented vertically and then inverted to create an interlocking pair that does not need an offset. It's clean and consistent, with just enough personality to keep it from feeling rigid.



This digital edge-to-edge design is great on floral quilt tops like the one shown in here in the blog post. Its simple, geometric nature also...

This is the fourth—and possibly last? (I said that last time) —design of my "Echoed" series. Originally, I created Echoed Swirls, then Echoed Curves. More recently, there was Echoed Circles, and now Echoed Stars!



This design takes after the original Echoed Swirls in its free-motion quilting look. Because of how the design is offset and nested, the rows are not easy to spot, which is why it could look like someone painstakingly fmq'ed it. 😉



I tried to make the stars vary slightly in size, without any of them being too big or too small. I also tried adjusting the tilt of the stars to give it a more organic look.



This design could be used for kids' quilts, modern quilts like this one, or even patriotic quilts. With the simple patchwork and a number of solid fabrics, I thought this quilt top could support quilting that's denser and more complex than with other quilt patterns.

The Quilt

Quilt Pattern

This is the Jelly Stripes quilt by Quilty Love. I finished it in October of 20...

Falling Star is a clamshell variant featuring a stylized star.

That's it! Thanks for visiting my blog! 👋 *waves goodbye*



This design has been hanging out in my sketchbook longer than its cousin Held Hearts (which was an emergency design made specifically for the quilt in the blog post linked above).



What makes this design distinctive is the split at the crown of the clamshell shape. And that split descends into a simplified star shape. Could we call it a twinkle? Yes, let's! The beautiful thing about the split is that it eliminates the need for any backtracking and is its own design element.

What I like about this little twinkle of a shape is that it echoes the same curves as the joining of the clamshells in the row below, nestling in just so.



It's a dainty little design that's meant to sparkle in the background, which is great for a busy, scrappy quilt like this one.

The Quilt

Quilt Pattern

I believe I stumbled upon this quilt pattern and purchased it through Etsy, but I'...

What good is the Internet if you can't use it to jump on a trend? The first time I saw something relating to "very demure" was an Instagram Reel of a real estate agent in Des Moines, describing the city as "very demure". I thought that was an odd way to describe it, but I continued with my day. In a short amount of time, I saw "very demure, very mindful" pop up in so many other places that I had to google it. Apparently, it originated with TikTok influencer Jools Lebron as a way to describe her look and way of being. It has caught fire from there! Now "very demure, very mindful" is a phrase that is popping up everywhere, and just when I needed a name for my new design. It fits, doesn't it? 



Demure's design starts with the outer petals and ends with the medaillion-like framing around a center circle. The repeating shape is elongated. 



Every other row is staggered at 50% with this design. When arranged, the row-to-row nesting is minor and is not challenging to align when stitch...

With the Box Tie design, I'm bundling file formats as I've never done before. So, if you received this as part of your membership or as part of the Digital Panto Club or purchased from our shop, please read carefully to find out what is included.
 

Box Tie is a design consisting of alternately situated hourglass shapes. Horizontal and then vertical, back to horizontal and then vertical.

I don't know what I was thinking when I named it. Instead of Bow Tie, I picked Box Tie as I was in the design process and then... never changed it. I'm not proud of this 🫠 - I usually change the name to something more memorable.



But here's what I want YOU to remember about this design.

It acts as a "cheater" cross-hatching design.

Cross-hatching is notoriously difficult to execute as a longarm quilter, mostly because every row has to touch the row above and below it to make it look continuous. We try to make it look as though we marked every line on the quilt top ahead of time and used ru...

This is Oil Spill, a digital edge-to-edge design created for multi-directional movement!



I've always wanted to design a version of a serpentine meander. It was one of the first styles of free-motion quilting I fell in love with twenty years ago. With this design, I E-X-H-A-G-G-E-R-A-T-E-D all of the lines and curves to make it look distinct from "traditional meandering", but with the same idea at heart: varied shapes, random-looking, and not directional. 

I started playing around with this pantograph design in mid-2022 after my grandma asked me to quilt a vintage top containing "found" blocks. 

My grandma will be 91 next month. In the 1950s, when she and my grandpa were stationed at a military base in Arkansas, she was randomly given the Sunbonnet Sue blocks you see in the quilt below. Her mother (my great-grandma Estelle) added the interesting sashing made of recycled clothing.

So, yes. It's a Sunbonnet Sue quilt—and heaven help me—I've never liked the pattern. I know!...

This is Royal, the newest extended-width digital quilting design from your friends (me) at Longarm League! 
 



Royal, as an extended-width design, operates like this:
• The first trip across the quilt will quilt the "crown elements" (aka the spiky shapes) with the circles up.
• Then, it'll quilt a straight line right to left, then stitch two more lines left to right and then right to left.
• Next, it'll stitch the same spikey shapes (circles down this time) left to right.
• This is followed by three more straight lines, ending on the left edge and ready for another repeat unless you need to stop to advance the quilt. 

This edge-to-edge quilting design would look super cute on a princess's quilt (I'm assuming you know one)! But it could also work for a Crown Royal quilt. Have you come across one? They incorporate fabric from the pouches included with Crown Royal Whiskey bottles - it's a thing. Or perhaps you get a Kansas City Royals baseball quilt? Boom! This design would be per...

My inspiration for this design came from the "ribbon candy" motif that—for whatever reason—always seems so effective in adding great quilting texture.

Ribbon candy is often used in custom quilting to add oomph to certain areas of a quilt top, whether it be in the patchwork or in a thin border or sashing. 



I wanted to translate that ribbon candy idea into an edge-to-edge design that would be effective regardless of the quilt pattern. 

I couldn't help but see the shape of an S in the ribbon candy, and the name Ess-Dog (from the song Jenny and the Ess-Dog by Stephen Malkmus) kept coming to mind when I was trying to name the design. But luckily, during the Christmas holiday break, Josh and I watched the entire series of the BBC show called Gavin and Stacey, and a lot of the show is set in Essex. I thought this was a much more grown-up name than Ess-Dog. :) 

I wanted to keep the repeats somewhat "contained" and also wanted a nice continuous shape with no backtracking, so I p...

I've always wanted to make my own version of "hand-guided" spirals to join the ranks of Feathered Spirals, Fancy Feathers, Echoed Swirls, Fossilized—designs I used to free-motion quilt before I had my computerized machine.

This was the first design that I drew on my iPad (using the Graphic app), then imported into Art and Stitch to "clean up". The most difficult part of that process was getting the rows to nest the way I wanted them to. After many, many iterations, I'm happy with the design that's meant to look "perfectly imperfect," like free-motion quilting. 

I think that the larger and more varied the single repeat is, the more a design looks organic. For these kinds of designs, my goal is that the design repeats and rows are difficult to find. :) 

I named it Perm because the spirals reminded of the curly hair look in the late 80s and early 90s! The one and only perm I got was a "spiral perm" at a local beauty school when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. My mom took my ...