(OOPS… just noticed I didn’t hit publish, sorry!)

In my quilt Blue River, I used several water-themed free motion quilting designs in the open blocks.

In fact I even quilted some fish!

I started on the right edge and stitched the first fish, echoed around in a couple times, then traveled to the next fish.  Once I had a whole school of fish quilted, I filled in the remaining area with echo lines.

In another block I added the words “Flow river flow.”  Use your best cursive writing to add any text you’d like!  Again, I echoed around the words with curvy lines to fill the block.

The i’s and t’s can be tricky! Remember to dot the I and cross the T before continuing to the next letter.

Leah Day inspired the next design, which she calls Ebbing Tide. I started with a line of pebbles.  One side is echoed with wavy lines.  The other side echoes each pebble with smaller curves.

Check out Leah’s website and Free Motion Quilting gallery for a complete tutorial for the Ebbing Tide free motion quilting design.

Echoes and wavy lines can quickly fill your quilts with beautiful free motion quilting.

The pattern for this quilt and 10 others can be found in Monochromatic Quilts: Amazing Variety, available through Amazon.