Free Motion Quilting Design: Paisley

The 4th most popular free motion quilting filler design is called Paisley. You often see this design around appliqué and filling up large portions of the background. Paisley is also called Clam Shells by some quilters.

Paisley is easy to create and is a perfect choice for beginner quilters. This design looks terrific on both a large and small scale, anywhere on your quilts!

Learn how to stitch Paisley in this Free Motion Quilting Video:

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Paisley Quilting Design

Paisley is stitched by first forming a Tear Drop Shape, then return to your starting point (the red dot). Pivot and Echo that tear drop shape 3-5 times. To move to the next Paisley, simply Travel Stitch and branch off with a new tear drop shape. Pivot and echo that shape, then branch off with a new shape.

Once you get the hang of Paisley, you will be ready to quilt lots of new quilting designs!

Paisley is the mother of all Pivoting Designs

This is a whole group of designs that work almost exactly the same as Paisley. New textures are formed by changing the starting shape from a tear drop to something new. If you can quilt Paisley, it's very likely you can quilt all of the designs in this section because they work the same.

Here are just a few designs that work very similarly! Remember, if you can quilt Paisley, you should be able to quilt all of these designs too:

Pointy Paisley	Drunk Pointy Paisley	Mussel Shell	Heart Paisley	Butterfly Wings	Pebble Paisley

Pointy Paisley - Instead of a tear drop shape, now you're stitching Triangles! This beautiful graphic design works great in all areas of your quilt and looks terrific when matched with floral fabric patterns.

Drunk Pointy Paisley is what happens when Pointy Paisley has had a few too many drinks - all the straight lines become wiggly and wobbly!

For Mussel Shell, basically the same rules of Paisley are followed, only this time aim to make your tear drop shapes very, very long and echo 5 - 10 times to create a design that looks like a real mussel shell.

Heart Paisley is stitched using heart shapes instead of tear drops. This fun flowing design is the perfect choice for a baby quilt or bed quilt that needs to be finished quickly.

Butterfly Wings is a great choice for beginners to free motion quilting. Start with a wiggly shape - basically your idea of what a butterfly wing looks like, then pivot and echo it as many times as you like!

Pebbled Paisley shows the extreme to which you can take these Pivoting Designs. First create a chain of Pebbles, then pivot and echo multiple times with a tear drop shape. The result is a gorgeous free motion quilting design, perfect for more formal, intricate quilts.

This is just a small selection of the designs you can make based on Paisley

Click here to check out all Pivoting Designs and see which ones you like to stitch best!

Note from Leah Day - When I first started the Free Motion Quilting Project back in August 2009, I really didn't like Paisley much. I found this design really difficult to quilt, and my thread would often break whenever I tried to quilt it.

It was only after switching to Isacord thread that stitching this design became easy and fun. I soon began creating many variations and now Paisley is one of my favorite designs!

Truthfully, the real reason Paisley was difficult was because I hadn't had enough practice at it yet. The more I've played with this design, the more I've completely fallen in love with it. Paisley is an excellent design for beginners and all the variations prove that this is one interesting texture sure to yeild even more designs.

Learn how to quilt the 4 most popular quilting designs! Click on the links below:

Microstippling

McTavishing

Pebbling

Paisley

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