Spiral quilting

Wow! I had so much fun trying this (new to me) technique for spiral quilting this past week. Amanda Jean Nyberg had a great tutorial on her blog Crazy Mom Quilts. I had a different quilting design in mind for this particular quilt but the more I thought about the spiral technique, the more I thought it would be a better design choice for my quilt - and I really wanted to try it!

I liked this technique for several reasons: 1. I could handle it on my home machine,  2. No marking necessary, and 3. Its modern, clean design worked well with my scrappy top. After finishing the quilting I would also add 4. It actually gets easier as the spiral grows and gets wider. Amanda Jean made it look pretty manageable so I took the plunge.

 

I pin-basted and marked the center circle and beginning of the spiral with a chalk pencil to get started. You can see in the close up shot, as I followed the spiral around, I just eyeballed the distance from my presser foot. I added approximately 1/4" so the space between the spiral lines ended up being about 3/4". It's not perfect, but I'm o.k. with how it turned out.

I'm so glad I tried this. I'm really pleased with the results and I will definitely use this again. Two thumbs up. Thanks Crazy Mom! The backing fabric on this is from Amy Butler called Midwest Modern.

Happy spiral stitching,

Tonya