Recommendations for a Spiral embroidery design needed

[Mary K.]

Hello!

I am looking for a design to put in the center of a medallion on a Bella quilt. This quilt is a wedding gift for my brother and his new bride.

I have placed two pictures on my profile (the last two pictures in the personal photo section) of the Bella quilt. Specifically, I am looking for a design to place in the center of the center design/medallion. I am planning to use the brown Batik fabric behind the light teal center design shown in the two pictures.

I have been looking for a design like the old Spirograph "toy" that I remember from my growing up years. I saw similar designs recently at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival in one of the award winning 2008 Hoffman challenge quilts. I am unsure of what the embroidery design is and whether or not it was a "for sale" design or something that was designed on design software by the quilter. I have not been able to find the design I am looking for in searching a couple of the on line embroidery stores that I have purchased from in the past. :?

I would be very interested in your recommendations on any "spiral" embroidery designs (or any other designs) that you think would be a great finish to the center of this quilt. :idea:

Thanks so much for your help! :!: :!: :!:

Mary Kay

[Mary K.]

MaryK
I Love your Bella quilt,very nice work.It gonna be a stunning quilt!
The link below you may find a nice quilting motif you like,I saw a really nice spiral one. good luck finding the quilting pattern you want. I look forward to seeing your finished quilt. PS.Your very first quilt was nice. All your quilts are pretty.

http://www.embroiderydesignshop.com/...e_Quilting.htm

[Liberata T.]

That's some gorgeous quilt.
Cindy Needham has some spectacular medallion patterns in her "Wholecloth Linen Quilts" book. I know they're not embroidery designs but I create designs using DP5.

I first have to create an solid line outline of the pattern that can be scanned into the computer as a picture. Then I can turn the artwork into a design within the software using Picture view. It is very simple. Don't adjust the size at this point. You could possibly eliminate some of the design you want. Load the artwork you've created, select "outline artwork prep." Click "OK." Select Design View. Use "Auto Digitize" tool and eliminate white (if more colors, eliminate all but black), and under "Design," select "Double Run." Click OK. Now you have a design you can manipulate as you like. If you have a design that has "floating" designs within, you will probably get jumps. If you don't want jumps, use "Paint" within DP5 to draw a line to connect the "floating" design to the rest of the design. Clear as mud?

This creates an endless number of quilting designs. But remember to turn the dotted line designs into solid lines before processing.

[Cheryl K.]

I will take another step from Libbi's suggestion. I don't remember if you have DP5 but I thought you had V5Editor Plus. Even if you have V4, there are the Mirror Merge and Wreath Tools that will allow you to take any simple shape (like an S) and create LOTS of spiral-y like designs.

An easy place to start would be to go to the Holice Turnbow Quilt designs in your software and open up designs that are fragments. I mean the NOT complete designs. Try using the Wreath or Kaleidescope (sp) tools and increase the number of elements to about 16 or so. Just play from there. If you are unfamiliar with how to use the tools, just go to HELP>ON SCREEN MANUAL> and go to the index and read the pages on how the tool works. Even if you just use the design for a master stencil, it's pretty fun.

The other thing I would suggest is to take a page from Ricky's Rhapsody tutorials and "paper fold" a portion of your quilt area. Using his "pencil transfer" method, you could come up with something that would work for your unique quilt.

The Bella quilt is fab-o!

Kim

[Mary K.]

Thanks, Ladies!!! I really appreciate the suggestions!

I will fiddle around with my software and see what I can get it to do...... and I have been thinking about getting some of the additional software (to make up for deciding that now is NOT the right time to buy an 830!) So maybe this is the right time to treat myself to some more software.

I will let you know what I come up with!

Mary Kay

[Mary K.]

I am sorry I don't have any designs for you but i wanted to tell you how gorgeous you quilt is.

[Mary K.]

I don't have any suggestions either but only a month or so ago "CuriousGeorge" found my old spirograph at Grandma's! He had lots of fun w/ it, and all I could think about was "what cool quilting patterns that would make!" :wink:
Florence

[Mary K.]

I am sorry I don't have any designs for you but i wanted to tell you how gorgeous you quilt is.

Thanks, Sherren! I am exciting to be approaching completion!!! Mary Kay

[Mary K.]

I don't have any suggestions either but only a month or so ago "CuriousGeorge" found my old spirograph at Grandma's! He had lots of fun w/ it, and all I could think about was "what cool quilting patterns that would make!" :wink:
Florence

I hadn't thought about the Spirograph until just recently when I saw a quilt in the Hoffman Challenge show - so cool! It really is a neat toy - and just gets the quilter's creative juices flowing! Glad to hear that there is someone else out there that remembers this cool toy! Mary Kay

[Mary K.]

Ok, Ladies! This has been an excellent learning experience for me!!!! (at least that is what I keep reminding myself!)

I have figured out that I have Editor Lite V4 (the original software that came with my 730). And I have spent a couple hours trying to install the software on my laptop (which runs on Windows Vista). It turns out that EL V4 is NOT compatible with Vista, so I am trying to figure out next steps. After spending an hour on Bernina's software support site (no luck here, just a continual endless loop), I am thinking that I will call my dealer tomorrow and find out if I can get EL V5 from her. Not sure is that is the right route, but I'll find out.

I have given thought to buying the more complex softare (DP V5, or something) but I think I would like to at least see what the basic version can do first.

We'll see! Dealing with challenges always builds character! :wink:

Mary Kay

[Mary K.]

This may be of no help to Mary Kay for the particular project she is working on, but I wanted to share this website because I think it has some great designs for inspiration.
http://www.marquetry.co.uk/main/html...rgory=circular

These are marquetry designs that remind me of the old spirograph toy. You might want to also click on the "back to design library" link to check out some of the other designs.

Enjoy,
Nancy

[Mary K.]

Wow, Nancy!!! Those are exactly what I was thinking of!!!! They might not be embroidery designs, but they ARE great inspiration!!! Thanks, MK

[Cheryl K.]

Nancy- your quilt designs are really wonderful. I saved the link in my favorites file.

MaryKay- V4 Ed lite would not give you Mirror-merge or Wreath tools even if you could get it installed with Vista. I would definitely recommend V5 software. There are 2 levels, Editor Plus and Designer Plus. E+ has the MM and Wreath tools I discussed plus 55 different fonts, reshaping tools, alignment tools and stuff to keep you busy for some time AND INCLUDES some basic auto-digitizing. D+ has some specialty tools that fine tune digitized designs plus 60 fonts along with so many things I won't take the time to write here. Both levels have a basic quilt design program but I really don't use it much as I prefer my EQ5.

You can start out with E+ and upgrade to D+ later if you wish.

Explorations is Bernina compatible software that is much less expensive but given your originality, I think you may have more freedom with Artista V5.

I love playing with the software but don't know anythign about installation quirks. I don't have Vista but when I needed to install the software, I called OESD's tech line and told them I needed step by step instruction and they walked me through the process.

Keep us posted.

[Liberata T.]

I decided to put my 2 cents in to agree with Kim.

I played with the designs Nancy suggested in my DP5 using a drawing of a quarter of one of the designs. It works a treat. I first tried a screen capture of one of the designs to produce a .bmp file to load in the picture view. I processed that artwork as a double run outline but that was unsatisfactory...too many missing lines. It only took a bit longer to draw a quarter of the design, then scan it as a .jpg file to process as Kim suggests.

I have also avoided installing Vista on my laptop on which I have installed DP5. There are so many capabilities in the software, it makes my head spin but I love it.

You are very creative and I think you will find that Editor or Designer will open a whole new aspect to your quilting.
Libbi

[Mary K.]

I found a pattern that I LOVED and posted some pictures in the members blog section!

Thank you for all your help, advice and suggestions! I learned something along the way as I tried to figure out how to make what was in my mind happen with thread!

I am thinking about upgrading the software that I have... fortunately the Editor Lite was able to do the basics that I needed done this time around. But I sure enjoyed the process, so I am anticipating that I will enjoy having more capable software in the future!

Thanks again, Ladies, for all your help and encouragement!

Mary Kay