Tag Archives: free motion quilting

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Since I'm without my own laptop, my posts will be pretty brief. (But oh how nice it is to be type on a machine with a working space bar!)

My One Monthly Goal for December is to finish my son's bed quilt. It is a twin-sized quilt and had been basted for quite some time. I had thread and a quilting motif picked out. This week I finally got it under the needle and got started. After the first spiral I calculated that I needed to make about 179 more to finish the quilt. Eek! I made some of the spirals a little larger to help cut down the total number needed, but this is still going to be slow going. And I'm going to try to resist calculating how many more spirals I have left. It's still a lot.

I love the texture created by this motif that I also used on this smaller Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt. I'm working in small chunks of time on this large project. It may not get done this month, but I'm happy to be making progress.

Thanks for visiting!

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The quilt I'm working on this weekend is one that I can't share, but I can show you how I'm quilting it. I chose an all over motif, because it's fast and I love that there aren't many threads to bury when I'm done. The design is similar to an all over loop motif, but instead of curves this motif uses all straight lines.

The most important part when quilting an all over motif is that you have a similar density of quilting across the entire space. Your triangles don't have to all be the same size or shape. The variety adds a lot of interest. If you notice that you accidentally make a giant (compared to your others) triangle, just work in some more of the large size triangles around the quilt. If you paint yourself into a corner, this motif is pretty forgiving if you have to cross over a line to get out of a tight space. And if you accidentally make a quadrilateral instead of a triangle, no big deal! My quadrilateral in the upper left probably stands out to you, but this is black on white (your thread choice probably blends better than this!) and it's a pretty small section we're looking at. I absolutely have a couple accidental quadrilaterals quilted into the baby quilt I just finished quilting. Probably nobody will ever notice, and if they do, that's fine.

If you're new to free motion quilting, or just trying a new motif, practicing by drawing on paper is a great way to build muscle memory and to practice how best to move across the space. My other advice when you start stitching this one is to try to only stop at a corner. If you stop in the middle of a straight line it's hard to continue in exactly the same angle you were going. Even if you only make a slight intentional turn in your line it will look better than an accidental wiggle. That said, once the quilt is washed* those little accidental wiggles will be harder to see.

My favorite tools for free motion quilting on a domestic sewing machine are Machingers Gloves and a Supreme Slider (also in queen size). I'm curious, does anyone use a Fabric Glide? If so, how do you like it?

*I quilt with Quilter's Dream 100% cotton batting and love the crinkled look once it's washed.

 

I've linked up to Tips and Tutorials Festival.

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I couldn't resist the appeal of the mini swap with The Modern Quilt Guild in which we would exchange our mini quilts at QuiltCon. I was assigned Ginger as my secret partner and found inspiration in her Pinterest account. Specifically, I was drawn to the colors in this pin and loved the color wash design and spiral quilting in this one. I'm not sure how I came up with the idea to make improv tumbler blocks. It mostly started as an exercise in figuring out if I could achieve it.

I started by cutting three tumblers from each fabric as I worked through scraps and stash choosing fabrics. I aimed for about 3" tall using my cutting matt as a guide, but all of my cutting was done with a rotary cutter and no ruler. I wanted a variety of tumbler shapes, but aimed for generally 1 1/2 - 2" wide on the narrower edge and 3 - 3 1/2" wide on the wider edge. Once I'd cut a bunch of tumblers, I started fiddling with layout on my design wall and ended up with this plan.

The easiest part of the piecing was connecting the tumblers in each row. The first row I pieced (the bottom row) came out to be pretty curved (which I adjusted a bit by picking out one seam), so from then on I worked to compensate for that a bit as I pieced. It's fun to watch the project shrink up as the piecing happens.

Once my rows were complete, I decided to use smooth curves to connect the rows.

So what's a girl to do when she's up against a deadline and also needs to pack for QuiltCon? Well, naturally, she should decide to use thirteen thread colors and dozens of starts and stops to quilt her mini! Right? That's totally a sound decision, eh?

I pulled all my Aurifil (50 wt.) that was even close to a color used in the quilt. From left to right they are #2735 Medium Blue, #5018 Grass Green, #1125 Medium Teal, #2783 Medium Delft Blue, #1231 Spring Green, #2135 Yellow, #3920 Golden Glow - Variegated, #1114 Grass Green, #2810 Turquoise, #4093 Jade, #2582 Dark Violet, #1100 Red Plum, and #2588 Light Magenta. Plus I attached the binding with #2605 Grey. If I stashed different weights of thread, I totally would have thrown them in too!

Then I stitched overlapping spirals that were approximately 3" in diameter. I mostly aimed to match the thread color to the area of the fabric that I was quilting on, but of course there were some great spots where strong contrast occurred as well. Here's where I started.

And some finished views.

I went to Savannah with zero threads tied and buried and my binding was only attached to the front of my quilt. I worked on burying threads on Thursday and Friday while watching demos and sitting near outlets to charge my phone. I got to give a handful of one-on-one demos myself on how to bury threads. ;-) Friday evening after dinner, I finished the final stitching on the binding. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator? I like that my late night hotel photo shows the texture of the quilting so well.

And of course, I took the quilt out for a mini photo shoot before delivering it to Ginger.

 

Here are Susan, myself and Ginger. We were connected in a little loop for the swap. Susan made for me, I made for Ginger, and Ginger made for Susan. We're each holding the quilt we received. I love the beautiful mini I received from Susan. It has some lovely embroidery detail that you can't see in the picture. And I adore the striped binding!

Thanks for visiting! I'm officially on an IG swap break for the time being... but boy are they fun!

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