What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

The weather has been different from hour to hour! Rain, grey clouds, sunshine, strong winds. Nothing dramatic, just a typical Dutch February. I have been able to do some cleaning up in the garden, that felt so good! I even managed to sow some Sweet Pea seeds.

This week’s free motion design is harder than it looks! Grab some paper and try it out.

The edge to edge design Splash creates Paint splashes or splatters by adding blobs in different sizes. When each set of blobs is completed, you travel to a new spot to add a new sequence ...

Behind the scenes I have been working on something epic! I have created an online free motion quilting course about the designs Ribbon Candy and Wishbone. The course is called Basic to Epic because it explains the classic sashing designs and then lifts them up to something even more decorative and complex.

Even though these two design may be considered basic, they are anything but. Learning the core structure of these designs will help you identify the cause of your wonky lines. You will learn how to tweak the structures to create any other variation.

Even experienced quilters see their ...

How many hearts would you like on your quilt?

Double up on your hearts-quota with this weeks design which would work really well on any Valentine’s Day quilt.

If your border or sashing in your quilt is a bit higher, you have enough space to add an extra heart inside of your Ribbon Candy Hearts. Your design will spread out bit more because the design needs to be wider for the extra hearts to have enough room. The lines might not touch each other anymore. Try to keep an equal distance to your previous line by looking at the ...

The last email to the students of the Ribbon Candy workshop has just been sent out. The workshop has now closed. The online class was a huge success with more than 500 students participating. We had 4 days of short lessons on the free motion design Ribbon Candy. Lots of people left comments and shared photos of their practice pieces, especially on the lesson with the design variations.

This weeks free motion quilting design Ribbon Candy Hearts was part of the online lesson on variations. If you were in the class, you may recognize the video.

Ribbon Candy Hearts is ...

When does a fascination become a specialization?

Two years ago I started adding to my collection of Ribbon Candy variations. Coming up with new versions of the traditional design quickly became my favorite ‘puzzle’ to do. The fascination expanded to the other sashing classic, the Wishbone design. I have shared a few of the variations on these two traditional designs over the last couple of months.

Last week I shared the Swirl Point design which has gotten a lot of attention on Instagram since then. The sped up video was viewed over 31.000 times, which is magical and unbelievable ...

A new tutorial, ohhh what a great way to start off 2024!

The Swirl Point design is a variation on the classic Ribbon Candy design. Let’s look at the basic Ribbon Candy first.

The pattern moves up and down with slightly angled lines that curve at the top and bottom. This creates teardrop shapes.

The design variation Swirl Point uses the space inside of the teardrops and fills it with a pointy curl. An s-curve starts off the design. Then a curl is added. The line then moves towards the centre the fabric strip, there it bounces back down ...

In October 2020 I was alerted to a charity called Perfectly Preemie requesting tiny baby clothes and baby sheets for the local hospital’s neonatal department. I decided to help out using my scraps and fabric remnants and turn them into sheets. The requested sheets were supposed to be double sided with a waffle-like cotton on the back. I didn’t have that type of fabric, so I decided to put some tops together and donate those right away, so somebody else could add the waffle back.

I was lucky to dig up just enough squares from 5″ stacks that ...

Happy Saturday!

The sun is out, the flowers are in bloom, enough fabric to quilt up, good music on the radio… Let’s focus on the good today!

Here is the fifth way you could quilt around the corner with a ribbon candy. I have dubbed it ‘Curl’ as that is last shape you stitch before reaching the corner.

Do you see how, in the drawing below, the blue Ribbon Candy (coming in from the left), turns into a purple curl? You stitch that curl when you are the closest as possible to the corner/diagonal (white dotted line). Finish ...

Welcome everybody!

Today I will show you a fourth option for going around corners using the Ribbon Candy pattern.

The concept of this option ‘Flow’ is quilting up to the diagonal in the corner (white dotted line). Once you are close to that diagonal you quilt, in one fluent movement, a corner flourish.

You can create a full stop of course, before going into that flourish. I actually prefer that full stop, so I can have a moment to think and plan my next movement.

You can merge your lines in the inner corner or use loops to get to ...

Hello everybody!

I hope you are all safe and healthy. Many of you are homeschooling children, taking care of family members and / or friends and trying your best to stay healthy and shelter in place. I do hope you can make some time for yourself and enjoy some quilting or just look at pretty quilts.

I have new 4 pattern ideas with several variations for you today to feast your eyes on.

The first pattern is one that is pretty easy to grasp: a simple curl or swirl is added at the tops and bottoms of the Ribbon Candy. Click ...

Welcome to the second post on quilting around the corner with a Ribbon Candy pattern. Thank you all for your positive reactions to the first post. I hope that the explanation of type 2 and 3 will be as equally motivating to go and tackles those corners.

In type 1 we worked our way to the outer corner of the border. Today I have two options for reaching the inner corner. In type 2 we will use the same principe as in type 1 with a straight premarked straight line. In type 3 we use a premarked curved line to ...

Now that we have studied the basic shape of the Ribbon Candy pattern in part 8 of this series, we can ‘pretty it up’!

Start with a large Ribbon Candy and then add a second ribbon where you cross at the middle line of the pattern. Click here, to be direct to YouTube to see this pattern come to life.

Animated tutorial 032 – Ribbon Candy – Lush

Yes, we can try that with three ribbons of course. Just make sure you have enough height in that border. In my sample the stitched pattern is 2″ high. I have found this it ...

Several people who commented on my posts on my blog or on Facebook/Instagram requested information on how they could quilt around a corner using the Ribbon Candy pattern, just like you would do in borders around a quilt.

So I started drawing to see what I could come up with.  Almost directly, I came to the conclusion I had to order the corner options into different types. These types are not definitive as some options/types are similar, but I hope they will help you decide which ones you would like to try.

Today I will share a few ...

YAY!

It is finally time to tackle the Ribbon Candy pattern variations!

For those of you who are a bit unsure of what the differences are between a Wishbone and a Ribbon Candy pattern, please bear with me… I will explain!

Ribbon Candy:

• Resembles a type of candy that is ‘gently folded’ like a ribbon. (wikipedia). To me its resembles a ruff in seventeenth century clothing, in Dutch called a ‘Molensteenkraag’ (wikipedia)
• The pattern moves from one direction to another by curving up and down with elegant swooshes.
• The pattern doesn’t need to cross over itself to do so ...

Hello again!

Are you ready for some more wishbone variations?

The last two tutorials (in part 4 of this series) may have been a bit complex for some quilters with all of that mirroring going on. These next two new tutorials will have hearts as well, but not the complexity of the previous patterns.

Two regular wishbone loops and one heart… ready, get set, GO!

Animated tutorial Wishbone Variations 013 – Loving Hearts

You have the option to create the heart shapes as you like them. For me, it really depends on the rhythm of a pattern to do one heart-shape ...

Happy New Year to you all!

Let’s start these ‘Roaring Twenties’ with some new tutorials based on the Wishbone Quilting pattern with some Ribbon Candy thrown in too.

In the previous post I shared two options of alternating a large and small wishbone. But there are more options, of course!

The first one is really dense and consists of a large, medium and small wishbone being repeated from large to small and back. It may look more structured if you widen the loops. Is there anybody willing to try ?

Tutorial Wishbone Sequence A.

For my taste it is a ...

With 24 fat quarters, our new fat quarter friendly pattern Ribbon Candy (part of the Stashin’ with Stephanie series) will definitely make a dent in your stash!

This quilt has a little bit of everything. We are strip piecing, sewing at an angle to create a pattern that looks complicated without too much fuss and no templates.

For this quilt I used Alison Glass Holiday, and I love how it kind of looks like candy cane stripes twisting around. But you could certainly use anything in your stash to make this happen. Just make sure you pick a fabulous neutral ...