Making of Dream Big Rose Panel Digital Quilting Design

Boy o boy! Am I relieved and ecstatic...and happy....🧵😍🧵

It was a challenge for me.

This panel is quite different from the other Dream Big panels that I have digitized.

If you look at it design-wise, some petals are quite huge, and some are very small. Petal 15 has a narrow part in the middle that is just too small. I do not think a free-motion quilter will find it as difficult. I call it an isthmus!

It does show my style but there are a lot of things that make this design different from my other Dream Big designs.

Firstly, I created a border around the outside rose petals to make it separate from the background.

When I saw the photo of the panel, I knew I was going to incorporate a rose somewhere. I was thinking to take a part of the design “Roses are Red Mandala” and make my job easier. But unfortunately, that design didn’t fit in the DB design! So, I had to create another rose. It looks very similar to the one in Roses are Red Mandala but is different.

Left is the panel (Quilted by Kim Tatro) - On the right side red one is a whole-cloth quilt (Quilted by me)

If you have bought and quilted the design, did you notice the rose in this petal 08? It is also available as a P2P (Petal 08) on the website! I reduced the size of the motif to about 1.75” in height for the panel.

I love the texture in quilts, and I am fascinated by micro-quilting.

I decided to experiment with some micro-quilting elements for this quilting design. The petal 06 has rectangular shapes with stippling lines in it which look like microquilting. These were all designed in Art and Stitch. It took quite some time to make them look just perfect. I went back and forth, to make sure that the distance between the lines was correct. Then I added and deleted points to make the lines smoother.

The other area where I tried to do micro-quilting is in the petal 07. This is my favorite design! It gives the petal a lot of texture and the design is modern. Thank you Jane Prestidge for testing this design for me!

The next thing that I want to talk about is using same design in a couple of areas. It is fascinating to me how a design looks different with just a few tweaks?

One of my very first designs was a 3-D pumpkin and a 3-D imprint of a hand. It is fascinating to me how simple line when used cleverly can give a 2 D object a 3D look. I want to make more 3-D design. Petal 11 is my attempt at that. I scaled the pattern down at the bottom to make the petal look darker or dense at the bottom. I don’t think I achieved that look but I will be doing some more experimentation. 

 Let’s talk about Petal 16! It is huge! But it was a perfect space for adding multiple designs in one area. The basic thing in my mind was the throat depth limitation. So I divided up the petal in 4 parts and came up with this design.

I love circles! I couldn’t finish this design without adding a “few” circles!

What do you think of this design? What Project do you want me to design next? Let me know by your comments