Beginner Machine Quilting Design - Flower Ball Quilting Tutorial with Leah Day
Check out this beginner machine quilting design, Flower Ball, and add a touch of spring to your free motion quilting! Leah Day demonstrates how to quilt this design on a stationary home sewing machine and a Qnique 19X Elite longarm on a frame.
Instructor
Leah Day
Leah Day is an online quilting teacher and founded LeahDay.com in 2009. She teaches quilting online via free YouTube videos and is also a dealer for Grace longarm machines and frames. Her mission is to empower and encourage quilters of all skill levels learn to make beautiful quilts.
Shop this tutorial
Chapters
Common Questions
What is covered in Beginner Machine Quilting Design - Flower Ball Quilting Tutorial with Leah Day?
Check out this beginner machine quilting design, Flower Ball, and add a touch of spring to your free motion quilting! Leah Day demonstrates how to quilt this design on a stationary home sewing machine and a Qnique 19X Elite longarm on a frame.
How long is the tutorial video?
The tutorial video is 00:03:57.
Is a transcript available?
Yes. A written transcript is available on the tutorial page.
Video Transcript
I love my quilting friends! My name is Leah day and in this tutorial we are
learning how to quote Flowerball.
This starts out with a cluster of circles, just some little bit of pebbling and
then we're going to get started with our flower petals. It's just a random petal shape. Stitch inside and just touch those inner pebbling, you know, those inner circles and then get back to a very random wiggly petal shape.
Because we started out organically in the center, the petals can definitely
evolve organically too meaning there's no right or wrong way to stitch them and there's no set number really.
So just have some fun stitch in those. Now once we get the first set stitch,
we're going to travel stitch and we're going to do another step so you can make these as tall, as wiggly, as random as you want. It's entirely up to you.
So this is a center fill design, meaning that we start in the center and then we branch out continually expanding these petal shapes. Just rings and rings of petals around it and you could conceivably take this design and stitch it all over a quilt. Meaning starting in the center or off center and continuing to expand the design until it covers the entire quilt and that would be not only super cute, it would be a very effective way of quilting it and maybe making it feel easier as you stitch to the outer edges.
So again I'm starting in the center and this time I'm doing some underwater rocks. I just really can't stitch pebbling absolutely perfectly on a long arm yet. So if you can't stitch it perfectly just throw more thread at it and spin around a few times and it's going to work out a okay.
All right so I think that's a good start and now let's do our petals. Remember these petals are just kind of branching out and kind of
do a wiggly line and then branch back in. So I'm just going to wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, come back in, trying to keep this under control so that they're all roughly the same height from the center. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
I was really pleasantly surprised when I stitched Super Daisy I found that really easy to stitch really a fun design. So I think that these center fill flower designs are just gonna really work well, no matter whether you're stitching on a home sewing machine or a long arm.
So now I'm spinning around continuing the design just expanding those petal shapes and all I have to do is just remember to wiggle around and then occasionally come back and connect with the row before the
petals.
Now if it gets too matchy matchy... if you feel like your petals are stacking up just exactly perfectly well, then just stitch a smaller one like that
and you're going to get more of a staggered effect. I think that looks a
little bit better.
Keep playing with this. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. The thing I love about flower ball is just how free form and fluid this design is. The petal shapes can be whatever you want to make it. You want to give them a little sharp point, you could you know, no right or wrong way of stitching it honestly and it's just going to fill in and add lots of pretty texture to your quilts. It's going to quilt very quickly overall. I was really really pleasantly surprised to find that too.
So I hope that you enjoyed learning how to quilt flower ball with me today both on a home sewing machine and on a long arm. Come and find many more free motion quilting designs like this in my videos!
learning how to quote Flowerball.
This starts out with a cluster of circles, just some little bit of pebbling and
then we're going to get started with our flower petals. It's just a random petal shape. Stitch inside and just touch those inner pebbling, you know, those inner circles and then get back to a very random wiggly petal shape.
Because we started out organically in the center, the petals can definitely
evolve organically too meaning there's no right or wrong way to stitch them and there's no set number really.
So just have some fun stitch in those. Now once we get the first set stitch,
we're going to travel stitch and we're going to do another step so you can make these as tall, as wiggly, as random as you want. It's entirely up to you.
So this is a center fill design, meaning that we start in the center and then we branch out continually expanding these petal shapes. Just rings and rings of petals around it and you could conceivably take this design and stitch it all over a quilt. Meaning starting in the center or off center and continuing to expand the design until it covers the entire quilt and that would be not only super cute, it would be a very effective way of quilting it and maybe making it feel easier as you stitch to the outer edges.
So again I'm starting in the center and this time I'm doing some underwater rocks. I just really can't stitch pebbling absolutely perfectly on a long arm yet. So if you can't stitch it perfectly just throw more thread at it and spin around a few times and it's going to work out a okay.
All right so I think that's a good start and now let's do our petals. Remember these petals are just kind of branching out and kind of
do a wiggly line and then branch back in. So I'm just going to wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, come back in, trying to keep this under control so that they're all roughly the same height from the center. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
I was really pleasantly surprised when I stitched Super Daisy I found that really easy to stitch really a fun design. So I think that these center fill flower designs are just gonna really work well, no matter whether you're stitching on a home sewing machine or a long arm.
So now I'm spinning around continuing the design just expanding those petal shapes and all I have to do is just remember to wiggle around and then occasionally come back and connect with the row before the
petals.
Now if it gets too matchy matchy... if you feel like your petals are stacking up just exactly perfectly well, then just stitch a smaller one like that
and you're going to get more of a staggered effect. I think that looks a
little bit better.
Keep playing with this. There's no right or wrong way of doing it. The thing I love about flower ball is just how free form and fluid this design is. The petal shapes can be whatever you want to make it. You want to give them a little sharp point, you could you know, no right or wrong way of stitching it honestly and it's just going to fill in and add lots of pretty texture to your quilts. It's going to quilt very quickly overall. I was really really pleasantly surprised to find that too.
So I hope that you enjoyed learning how to quilt flower ball with me today both on a home sewing machine and on a long arm. Come and find many more free motion quilting designs like this in my videos!
