December 01, 2010

Free Motion Quilting Designs: Scallops

Scallops: curves that end in points. They are simple to stitch, and can range from subdued to sophisticated. Generally scallops are stitched in offset rows. So some or all of your rows will contain half scallops. Here is a basic scallop.


You can square it off


Or change the line.


The clouds make me feel happy.


You can add things to the middle of a scallop



Or to the points


I was inspired by Amy of angry chicken to sketch some variably sized and spaced scallops.


And by Dioramarama to try them randomly, without rows. Both of these variations were fun!


Upside down scallops look like waves.


Intersect two lines of scallops and look at that!


Nestle four lines of scallops together and wow!


Look what happens if you make alternating scallops in two directions. An easy and elegant all over pattern. It's shown only partially completed so you can see what's going on. Mirrored scallops going from top to bottom intersect mirrored scallops going from left to right.


Prior to thinking about them as their own design family, scallops were not really on my quilting radar. But now I can't wait to quilt something with them! They are fun to sketch (you may want a guide with evenly spaced marks to help you keep your scallops evenly spaced) so you should definitely get some scallops in your quilt journal. As a reminder, the Free Motion Quilting page has all the prior design and quilt along posts conveniently listed!

See more Free Motion Quilting designs and tips on the Free Motion Quilting page.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

you make everything look so easy. thank you for the tutorials, I am almost ready to start it.

Rosalyn Manesse said...

Thanks for all the quilting ideas. I usually quilt vertically, not horizontally. But these patterns could go that way, I think

Suzanne said...

It's so interesting to see you break down the quilting shapes. You remind me of a Ginsu knife commercial. "But wait, there's more!"

I mean that in the nicest way. :-)

Alexis said...

Your blog has given me new hope. So far all I have done is stippling with my home "short arm" quilting frame and machine. Thanks so much.

Elsa said...

thanks for the inspiration! I'm still practicing!

Quilting By Celia said...

Your blogpost on machine quilting is fantastic. Will certainly be using it to get me started.

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