Saturday, August 22, 2020

Quilting Tutorial: Steampunk Gears

When I quilted Rainbow Road, I had the idea of a Matrix-style steampunk city, so I tried to do a steampunk design of gears and teeth. I wasn't sure how it'd turn out, but I really liked the result. I've received requests for a tutorial on how to quilt this, so I'm trying my hand at a how-to guide.

I suggest practicing drawing this before trying it on a quilting machine. This design is actually just a variation on swirls, so it'd be helpful if you already knew how to quilt swirls. That being said, let's get started.

First, this design does need to be boxed into a space. Then, from a corner, we start with a traditional swirl. Swirl to the center and come back out. It's very important to close the swirl with another echo outside of it.
Now, we add some teeth.
After we make some teeth, we close it with another echo, this time the echo should touch the edge of the teeth.
After this comes the most important echo. After this you can quilt as many echoes on top of it as you wish, but there must be at least one extra besides the one that touches the teeth or the effect will be lost.
From that point on, quilt more gears. Once in awhile, I like to throw in one with a different shape, a square shaped gear teeth. It's harder to quilt than the triangle teeth for me, so I throw it in only once in awhile for a change of pace.
And so on and so forth.
I really like how this design looks on certain types of quilts, and I hope this tutorial was helpful!

7 comments:

  1. The first time I came across your blog was the Rainbow Road post. Stopped me dead in my tracks. I spent a lot of time exploring your quilts on the blog and Instagram and really appreciate the tutorial. It explains a few things for me about your incredible quilting designs!

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  2. Thanks for the succinct tutorial! This will be a fun motif to try :)

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  3. This is an excellent tutorial; thank you so much!

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  4. Oh My Gosh! Thank you so much for sharing.
    I love this!
    -Jean
    ❤️

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  5. Wow, great tutorial, Liz!!! You make it sound so easy and clear!!!

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  6. Just found your blog and how I love your quilts and quilting! The calculations you offer are so helpful. I look forward to following your quilting journey. Thank you!

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