Planty Friends, Part Two: FREE Q-matic File
Let’s quilt the Planty Friends quilt! Last week, I shared the free Planty Friends pattern with you. Today you will find the Q-Matic file to go with the quilt in this blog post.
Planty Friends Fabric
The Planty Friends pattern went on a journey through all the different design stages for quilting. The pattern originates from my book, Happy Notes. There are two versions of the book, a PDF version and a paperback.
When I was working on my second fabric line for Benartex, I used the designs from my book as inspiration. There, the Planty Friends Fabric came to life.
Of course, I needed to make the Planty Friends FPP block with my new fabric. That turned into a whole quilt pattern. In my previous blog post, you will find the free FPP pattern for both the crib and throw-size quilts.
After the blocks were finished, and I was working on putting the quilt tops together, I started thinking about a quilt design for the quilts.
Planty Friends Quilt Design
These were my first doodles. I often start with some drawings on paper. Some lines, testing out ideas. Then, it evolves from there.
When I have an idea of what I want to draw, I move over to Illustrator to finalize the design. From there, I can export a design to use on the Q-matic.
For this quilt design, I chose a directional pattern. Where the plants would all be up right, just like the FPP pattern.
This is the final design I chose to use. Half circles, combined with a simplified version of the plants.
When designing a quilt pattern, you often have to use travel stitches. Travel stitches are where you stitch on the same line twice to get from one spot to the next. In this design I decided to travel not over the lines, but right next to the lines. I thought this added a fun effect to the plant pot.
Q-matic File
Here is the file I used for the Planty Friends quilt. You can download the Q-matic file for yourself or send it to your longarmer. It can be used as an edge-to-edge design.
Using the Planty Friends Quilt Design
Download the .bqm file and import it to your Q-Matic. Then, add it to your design space and use the Multiply option to fill the whole space of your quilt.
First, you will repeat the design ‘Across’ as many times as you need for the size of your quilt. It should be bigger than the quilt size, we will trim it later.
Then you increase the ‘Down’ by one. Now, play with the offset and vertical pacing until you have a design that you are happy with. I tried to center the arc of the design in the middle of the reindeer in the row above.
Then you can increase the ‘Down’ number to as many as you need to fill your quilt.
Scale and Thread Choices
Since I was making two Planty Friends quilts, I could play around a little with different options.
For the crib-sized quilt, I chose a slightly bigger scale for the quilted plants, and I used a colored thread. Using a colored thread is something I’m always a bit scared of. What if it shows too much? What if I’m not happy with it after quilting?
But on the other hand, it’s nice to try new things and do things a little out of your comfort zone. I say a little since the color I chose was very subtle. I used a very light green 50wt thread. So the thread was still not showing too much, but I’m very happy that I used it! It gave such a nice soft extra color to the quilt. It worked very well.
For the throw-size quilt, I scaled down the pattern. Making cute, small-sized plant pots. I used a white thread that would blend in with the background.
The Planty Friend Quilt was hanging in the Benartex booth at QuiltCon. And only after pointing out to people that there were min plants, they noticed them. That was just what I was going for. A fun detail in the quilting, but not something that was too much. All the attention still goes to the patchwork when first looking at the quilt.
Enjoy!
I really enjoyed the whole Plant Friends journey. The design of the block, the fabric, and the quilt pattern.
Make sure to download the file and store it somewhere where you’ll be able to find it again. That way you will always have access to it in case you need some cute Planty Friends on your quilt!
Thank you, till next time,
Irene
