Trends in Quilting Designs

If you’ve been around the (quilt) block, you’ve seen different quilting styles emerge over time, and it’s wonderful to have so many choices!

When machine quilting started, a simple meander was a great way to quickly stitch a child’s or utility quilt.  You were fancy if you added a loop to your meander!

For custom quilting, many quilters tried to mimic hand quilting – stitching ¼” away from the seam line, and stitching lots of feathers (with backtracking along the spine) and cross-hatching.

However, mimicking hand quilting was very time consuming and required a lot of skill.  So quilters created styles like continuous curves to outline the seams but in a way that allowed them to quickly outline the entire block with one stop and start.

Feather styles emerged that didn’t require backtracking along the spine, or even eliminated spines all together!

Light custom followed the piecing, but the quilting was looser and more free-style, like ribbon curls.

Heavy custom quilting got denser and denser, with stippling (a small meander, or curvy line) and then even micro-stippling!

Instead of lots of curves with feathers and florals, point to point quilting emerged with straight lines connecting points of the piecing for a geometric flair.

As computerized machines became more and more popular, quilters could achieve amazing precision and detail.

Enter Modern Quilting with straight lines very close together.  Thank goodness for channel locks!

What’s next?  That’s what makes quilting so much fun!  Creatives are always thinking up new ways to quilt.  But remember that whichever style you choose, have fun with it!  There’s rarely only one right way to do anything.  Pick the style that makes you happy!

Enjoy and Happy Quilting!