Thread Talk from my Sewing Machine #19

In my humble opinion, two key thoughts in doing overall quilting motifs on your quilts are:

1.  The general even-ness in distance among motifs — that’s what gives the overall look.  Evenly spaced motifs give the eye a sense of uniform continuity, and do not draw attention to one particular spot on the quilt.  Now, it’s not going to be “exact” in the even-ness.  As long as there’s not a gaping hole that screams “quilt” me in your quilted area, you should be okay.

2.  The continuous movement from one motif to the next repeated motif is a flowing one.  In other words, the connecting line you quilt after you quilt one motif should be such that it wouldn’t look dis-jointed from the previously quilted motif, and awkward when connected to the following motif.

You will do just fine if you remember those two points when you tackle the swirly tails!  See if you can make heads and tails of these following schematic diagrams…

Transferring the concept to my quilt sandwich:

And you keep building these swirly tails from that last schematic diagram!  These swirly tails are a bit more complex than my plain ol’ swirls.  So, if you aren’t familiar with the swirls, see if this helps.  Play with the plain swirls first before you add the tails!

Happy Quilting!