Concentric circles

One project I finished recently is a take on the Colour Wheel quilt pattern in Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson, made for my cousin. I decided to quilt it in a slightly different way to the one suggested in the book. I wanted to quilt it using concentric circles, and I thought I’d share my method for doing so.

The circles are spaced 1″ apart. I worked from the centre out to prevent the batting bulking up in the middle. For the inner circles, I found a selection of plates and bowls in the kitchen that were the right sizes (we’ve got a lot of mismatched crockery!) and drew round them with a water soluble fabric marker. I then quilted along the lines using a walking foot. Eventually I ran out of plates, and moved on to the second method. I cut a length of string and sewed it into the centre of the quilt. I could then tie the string around the water soluble fabric marker and use the whole arrangement like a beam compass. 

As the circles got larger, I found it helpful to mark the 1″ separations along the joining seams so I could be sure I wasn’t stretching the string and distorting the circle. I also found it helped to hold the pen perpendicular to the fabric.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

EDIT: If you’ve used this tutorial to quilt in concentric circles, please consider adding a picture of your quilt to the concentric circle quilts Flickr pool. Thanks!

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