It is a go-to design that you’ll find yourself using over and over. It’s a simple design that is just like writing cursive lower case l’s and e’s. Moving on to a little more challenging loopy design know as L’s and E’s. That way, your friends and family will not think you are weird when you are shouting, “up.down.up.” L’s and E’s If I only think the mantra, saying it in my head, I will still wander off. And when my mind wanders, I end up with 3 or 5 UP loops and no DOWN loops. Otherwise, if I don’t say the mantra, my mind starts to wander and I’m thinking about what to have for dinner or how many yards of backing fabric I need to buy for the top I just finished or…., well you get the picture. If I’m quilting the side borders vertically I will say, out loud, So if I am quilting a loopy border horizontally I will say, out loud, “Up….Down….Up….Down….” In quilting, I use mantras when I am quilting a pattern that repeats regularly to help me keep the pattern going. Mantra is defined by as a word or phrase chanted or sung as an incantation or prayer or an often repeated word, formula, or phrase. Pro-tip: If you make a mistake, do it 3 more times and then it becomes a design choice. So I fixed my mistake by doing it again every so often to make it look like it was intentional. Well, just maybe, I got distracted when I was quilting that loopy border and forgot to alternate direction. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! 😉 I’m going to say I did this on purpose, to create interest. You see I alternated the direction of the loops, mostly, but every now and then I threw in two loops in the same direction. It works great for smaller borders and for sashings. You can quilt loops all in a row for a very fast and easy border design. This example is a stipple, but you get the idea. Quilt around the inside shape but not over it. The more you do it, the better you will get at looking ahead, planning your next move and filling the shape without any gaps and getting an even distribution of texture.Īdvanced practice: draw a shape and then draw another shape within the first one. Draw a shape (square, rectangle, triangle) on your fabric and fill it with loops. You don’t want lumpy gravy, you don’t want lumpy thighs and you don’t want lumpy quilts.Īchieve even distribution of texture by spacing your loops approximately the same distance apart and don’t leave any large gaps where there are no loops. There will be poofy-ness in the big open space where there are no loops. The tightly spaced loops in the upper left will make the quilt flatten out. If I fill the same space as the first example with loops like this, it will not look good on a quilt. In other words, you don’t want a bunch of loops really close together and then a big space and then some more loops. It means you want the quilting lines in the design to be approximately, evenly spaced apart. To make your quilts look their best, no matter what design you are quilting, you want an even distribution of texture. Notice how they are pointing in all different directions and some are large and some are smaller and some are round and fat and some are more oval shaped? Easy! Oh, but there is one thing you do need to pay attention to when you quilt a loopy meander. Make them go in all different directions. This is the easiest free-motion design to quilt in my book. So let’s just dive right in and get loopy. Unlike a stipple, where you cannot cross lines, with loops you have to cross the lines! The motion to create loops is very smooth and easy-going. With loops, even if they are different sizes and some are round and some are tall and skinny, they still look good.

Often times with other shapes we have to try really hard to make the shapes uniform in size and proportion in order to make the quilting look its best. I think that loopy designs are the most forgiving and the easiest to quilt. Back for more free-motion quilting this week! It’s time to try our hand at loops.

Meander quilting designs