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 ...