Divide and Design: Planning Machine Quilting Designs
Jen Eskridge 
Trying techniques from Lisa Calle's book, Divide and Design. Repost from ReannaLily Designs 2017.
Divide and Design: Planned Machine Quilting Designs
From the archives of ReannaLily Designs, I'm sharing with you my first try at Divide and Design quilting. Now, in 2026, this post is almost 10 years old, but it is still so relevant. Lisa's book, Divide and Design has turned out to be such an inspiration. I 1000% recommend giving it a try. It is an interesting approach to planning your pieced quilts, using lines and intersections that already exist in your project.
The look of planned quilting designs is amazing. I love how they compliment the quilt and bring out a whole secondary design around the quilt block. In fact, I love it so much I grabbed the Divide and Design book by Lisa Calle.
My small baby quilt project is quilted on a longarm quilting machine for this test design.
Her work is stunning (#fangirl), and she breaks down the method to design quilt motifs in her book. I’ve basically been putting off trying the technique until I had the perfect block-based quilt ready to go.
Well, it occurred to me that may never happen. Lisa’s book outlines how to choose points to divide your block/space. Starting with that notion, I should be able to try her method on anything, right?
Side story: This teal baby quilt has been in the UFO pile for nine years. Yes, I really just wrote NINE YEARS. I know because I won the fabric from Karen Combs’ booth at my first-ever quilt market in Fall of 2008. The fat quarter bundle was sponsored by Blank Textiles. Yes, NINE years ago. Now seems like as good a time as any to get this guy quilted up.
I remembered making the quilt square. (cough cough) I based my divide-points on the fact that I must have 12″ blocks in this design. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the directions as closely as I should have.
Lisa mentions tracing paper and black & white copies and other things to be really successful with this technique. Well…. I said “Ok, dots. I’m gonna do this right now!” I was really excited to try the technique! I didn't follow the directions, but that's ok.
After I loaded the quilt and was about 2/3rds the way finished with the longarm machine quilting, I noticed that my quilt was in fact a rectangle, not a tidy square.
This quilt also did not have defined 12″ quilt blocks as I had remembered. Turns out, nine years is a long time to remember details. Good gravy. Dangit. But, this revelation is ok. This is a practice piece, remember? No problemo.
See along the top edge and bottom edge in the picture above? There are three 1/2 circle shapes, except the bottom edge’s circles are 3″ longer and look much more like pope hats.
Failing memory aside, I think my first go at Divide and Design was pretty neat. I will absolutely be following the directions more closely and taking the time to choose a sensible block-based quilt when I try Lisa’s method again. In the meantime, this little rascal is going to be bound and likely donated to a local children’s charity.
Give it a try and tag #quiltyquill if you share it online.
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Categories: : Quilting
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