This design called Bell Tower is our latest edge-to-edge digital pantograph with a modern, geometric theme.
 


Sometimes it's tough to pinpoint why I like or dislike a design, but I think the reason I like this one is the space between the shapes creates a "channel" that gives some visual oomph. 



If I look at this design long enough, it looks like a deconstructed orange peel, just don't ask me to explain how or why!



I chose to quilt this design on this quilt top because of the vertical orientation of both. I like how the soft curves of the panto add interest, as well.

The Quilt

It's a star quilt; what's not to love?

The pattern I used is called The Helen Quilt from Kitchen Table Quilting. You can find the PDF for sale here. I love the orientation of the stars and how they alternate between large and small. It was a great way to use the fat quarter bundle of Lazy Afternoon, a fabric line by Zen Chic for Moda. 

I used scrappy low-volume prints in white and cream for the star b...

Just so you know, the only thing I was thinking about when I was designing this new edge-to-edge pantograph was hot dog buns! I was going for that rounded shape. In the end, I thought the name Plus sounded more mature than Hot Dog, which was the temporary file name until that final save.



I think this quilt top paired so well with the design! Usually, I have a small stack of quilt tops waiting for a new design to test out, but in this case, I was reminded of the Peanut Butter pattern as I was looking through Instagram posts I'd saved, and I made the quilt top just to use for this Hot Dog—I mean Plus!—design.



The design has just a bit more complexity than I'd like, but I couldn't find a way around it. When the stitch path is almost completed, it pivots direction to backtrack across the top horizontal line of the plus shape on its way to start another repeat. I tried bisecting the design with a straight line through the middle, but I just didn't like the way it looked compared t...

Introducing Echoed Curves! 



Let me tell you, I felt some internal pressure after I finished this quilt top to pick the perfect pantograph for ALL of that negative space! 

I also wanted to use this quilt to test a new design. So, I went through some sketches I'd been working on in my design software and identified this one as being complementary for the funky curves of the patchwork. I love the texture of the quilting, especially when echoed lines are used. There's a magic texture-compounding effect that happens when echoing is present.

I was so happy when I stitched this out for the first time and it worked! Not in the technical sense - I knew I could stitch it out as designed, but in a "I'm glad I made this choice" kind of work. 

Naming a design can be the hardest part for me! I have a design named Echoed Swirls, so I thought Echoed Curves would be the next in an "echoed" series, albeit four years later. ;)

The Quilt

This is the famed Free Wheeling Single Girl pat...

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...

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...

The Design

Are you familiar with "extended width" digital quilting designs? Usually, the standard files we upload contain one repeat that's multiplied side by side across and down the quilt by our software when in pantograph mode. With extended width designs, the design itself is typically around 100" wide—give or take—with any repeating sections "built in". If you are new to this kind of design, read more here (including specific info if using Intelliquilter). The main takeaway is that they need to be set up as a block pattern.

 Rich Girl is an extended width design that stitches out very quickly. The echoed lines are angled very subtly, but the diamond shapes that result amidst the lines give just the right amount of contrast in their open spaces.

This is a perfect design to use as an alternative to straight line quilting. It will unify a busy quilt top like straight lines do so well, but with a bit of added, low-key interest. 

As I was stitching this out, the design ...

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...

Seis is the word for the number six in Spanish. Based on this design's hexagon shape, I knew I wanted to name it something relating to the hexagon, but I haven't gotten far enough in Duolingo to know the name for hexagon en español yet, so Seis is where I landed.

Okay, Google tells me hexagon is hexágono in Spanish, but now it's too late! I've already committed to Seis.

If you're on our email newsletter list, you might remember me talking about how obsessed I am with Duolingo. I am learning Spanish these days (streak of 57 days, nbd) to augment my high school Spanish education which started some 28 years ago. Ouch! It's one thing to recall the years since high school graduation, but it's another experience to count back to the time you began high school. I wasn't ready for that number! 

Anyway, if you are interested in learning another language (they offer courses for 40+ languages), check out their website or download the app. They have a free tier, but I've found the paid f...

This design is all about the negative space—also known as white space—around the lines. I love how the curvy parts of the design are reminiscent of cathedral window blocks and how the straight lines create channels that provide some contrast to the curvy.

If I didn't design this and wasn't sure where the repeats were, it looks like it could be difficult to line up from row to row. That is definitely not the case! This design is very simple to stitch out. Every other row does need to be offset by 50%, but there is no exact matching necessary anywhere. 

If you stitched this design out on a quilt loaded on its side, you'd see results that play up hourglass or spool shapes. I also see asterisks and orange peel variations if I look at the pattern long enough! :) 

The Technical Details

A video of the stitch path appears at the top of this post. Again, it's a pretty straightforward and simple design with a fluid sequence. On the included PDF, I did indicate "minimal" over...