The quilting itself is rarely what stops a custom job. Deciding what to quilt is. Lindell of The Quilt Room in Melbourne gets past that before the quilt goes near her longarm: she photographs the top, opens it in Procreate on her iPad and doodles quilting ideas right over the picture.
Two habits make it work. Get the photo as square as you can, because a straight photo is much easier to draw on. And start a new layer before every idea. Draw on the photo itself and nothing can be erased, while separate layers let you hide one design, try the next and compare. The pen and color barely matter; she uses a plain monoline pen in dark gray. No iPad? Print the photo, slip it into a plastic sleeve and draw with an erasable marker.
Her example is a small navy and white star quilt, about 47 inches square, that reads as a little boy's quilt, so flowers and anything too swirly are out. She treats the white as negative space and tries a meander, then loops, then a divide and conquer approach that picks up secondary lines already in the piecing. She also reminds herself that not every space needs to be fancy. In the border, motifs of varied height look better than a row of identical ones, and the blue triangles may end up with nothing at all. For the star centers she sketches a cross, a spiral, arcs, an orange peel and a crosshatch before settling.
A useful Procreate detail for free motion practice: holding the pen down snaps a line straight, which she switches off under gesture controls when doodling continuous designs, since at the machine you cannot lift the needle either.
Her last point is the one to keep. The drawing is not a contract. She expects to change her mind once the quilt is loaded, but having a plan makes walking up to the machine far less intimidating.
When you are ready to choose motifs for each part of a quilt, our guide to free motion quilting designs and where each one belongs is the next step. Lindell shares new longarm videos on The Quilt Room channel.
