All Over Quilting Designs are fast and easy to machine quilt. All of these designs can be machine quilted on a large scale (that's lots of distance between the lines of quilting) and over your entire quilt to create a pretty texture without distracting from your piecing design.
If you've been machine quilting for awhile, you will probably recognize a lot of these all over quilting designs because they include very popular designs like Stippling and Paisley.
All Over Quilting Designs
Click the images below to find a quilting video tutorial so you can learn how to machine quilt the design on your home machine or longarm machine:
Enjoy browsing this collection of quilting designs and please share this resource with your quilting friends!
More Information About All Over Quilting Designs
As you can see from watching a few of these quilting videos, all over quilting designs are generally quicker and easier to machine quilt. Many of these all over quilting designs are quilted with free hand, free motion quilting, but a few can be quilted with walking foot quilting.
This is a very fast quilting style that requires less planning and less fuss than other machine quilting styles.
Why is All Over Quilting so easy and fast?
Because it completely ignores your quilt top.
The basic concept of all over quilting as a design style is to ignore your patchwork or piecing design. Applique, paint, and any other surface design element on the quilt top is similarly ignored. An all over quilting design stitches over ALL of it!
What Quilts are Best Suited for All Over Quilting Designs?
- Scrappy quilts with no clear pieced or appliqued design.
- Busy quilts pieced from busy printed fabric.
- Baby quilts, throws and bed quilts that needed to be finished yesterday (or maybe last year!)
In the case of scrappy quilts and busy quilts - why bother machine quilting a complex design on your quilt if no one will be able to see it? All over quilting designs will secure the layers of your quilt together so it can be used and enjoyed.
The same is true for quilts that just need to be finished quickly. Because all over quilting is so fast, you can conceivably finish your quilt in a day and be sleeping under it tonight. Here's a charity quilt I quilted in 1 hour!
Criticism of All Over Quilting Methods
Of course, there is a downside to quilting your quilts as fast as possible. It will become apparent to you the first time you stitch over a beautiful star block or perfectly appliqued rose.
If you take the time to piece or applique beautiful shapes, shouldn't your quilting design accent and elevate these design elements?
Quilt show judges definitely think so. If you plan to compete with your quilt and want to win a ribbon in a quilt show, you will want to use more quilting designs and quilt in a way to accent your piecing or applique.
Beginning Quilters Need All Over Quilting Designs
If you've watched some of the quilting videos linked above, you can already see, these designs are great for beginners. Here are some tips for mastering any design:
- Pick one all over quilting design linked above and watch the tutorial.
- Practice the design by quilting a small quilt sandwich. No, this isn't a waste of time or material. It will help you learn the rules of the quilting design and get some of your wiggles and wobbles out.
- Baste and start quilting your quilt. You'll be happy you did some practice beforehand, but please don't expect your quilting to be perfect.
- Stitch your entire quilt with that single quilting design. As for where to start and how, this depends on the type of machine you're using (home machine or longarm machine) and how it's set up (in a table or on a quilting frame).
- By the time you finish quilting one project, you will have mastered quilting that design. You'll also probably be so sick of it you never want to quilt it again!
Where Do We Start Quilting?
Where you begin quilting an all over design depends greatly on the machine you're using and how it's set up. I call this your Quilting System.
I've recently updated my Ultimate All Over Quilting Tutorial to include detailed videos on how to do all over quilting on the following quilting systems:
- Home machine or longarm set in a sewing table.
- Walking foot quilting (home machine only).
- Home machine on a quilting frame.
- Pantograph quilting with a longarm machine.
- Computerized quilting with a longarm machine.
Wow! We have lots of different ways to do all over quilting and so many different ways we can set up our machines! Click Here to check out the Ultimate All Over Quilting Tutorial.
Share the Quilts You've Quilted with these All Over Quilting Designs
Have you quilted your quilts with any of these all over quilting designs? Please send us a picture so we can add it to this gallery!
