My Free Motion Quilting Journey

To me, free motion quilting is to me, one of the most artful and challenging quilting skills! When I first start practicing it was so discouraging. My thread was breaking! Nests of threads all over my work! To practice, I created a quilt sandwich. This image is from my organic quilt tutorial you can find at this LINK.

SIGH* This below was one of my more successful practice pieces, but still struggling so much to make stitches even. At this point I wasn’t worried about a pattern, I just wanted to create a line without any problems!!

I just hate wasting fabric but I knew I needed to try it on something bigger so I could really work on my stitch length and groove. A small quilt sandwich I’d finish in a few minutes. This quilt yellow, red and white quilt top was something I had laying around that I didn’t really have much of a plan for.

Working on smaller areas, like focussing on each triangle at a time drastically improved my work. I found that when you are ready to lay down your foot, take a PAUSE and know what direction you are going to go!! Heh, isn’t that a thought for life?

I worked each half triangle with loop de loops at first. I decided NO rip-outs, this is for practice!!

I have big illustration projects going on in the studio so I’m sewing in the kitchen. My kitchen table is the biggest surface in the house and I found it very helpful to have everything laid nice and flat. My Juki has a large, adaquet throat space but is not a long arm so more surface space is helpful.

Durring this time I focused on making sure the begining of the stitch was clean - no birds nests. This means bringing up my bobbin thread and holding any thread tails out of the way. Some triangles were a disaster and some I was seeing progress. Towards the end when I felt ready, I went for the meander, and I saw it start to happen! People, I squealed out loud with joy!

All my practice began to pay off and the meander was just HAPPENING! Flying high was an understatement and I was feeling confident enough to do a meander for a special quilt I was planning for my sweet cousin’s baby boy on the way.

This quilt is simple squares but by using a lot of different patterned fabrics it makes a “simple” quilt more elevated. The meandering will become more of the start of the show. Here, I’m using moda fabric. It isn’t cheap to make a quilt with a lot of variations but for this special gift, I had help funding this big project. Get this, the title of this fabric collection was called MEANDER! I believe in signs!

I should mention, I drive a JUKI. I love my Juki so much, my favorite aspect is the self-threading needle. It always works and is so quick, with a click of a button I’m off to the races. It has a lot of the fancier features of the very high-end and expensive machines but more affordable. I have an affiliate link to a very similar machine in my store if you are interested in learning more.

You can see the piecing coming together below. Trying to get each corner pointy and crisp. Most quilters work in strips but I find working into large blocks works best for me. When I sew long strips, I’m more likely to get an “off” corner.

One the quilt top is done, I sandwiched it up! I used two layers of batting for extra snuggliness. The top layer I used a lofty batting for extra poof. I’ve been into spray basting lately, (check out my store for what I use.)

Now, one thing I’ve learned about spray basting is that you need to let that stuff DRY for a day. Eager is an understandment for me, but that stuff will gunk up your needle and you’ll end up breaking thread, having wonky stitches - all the frustrating problems. It’s just pure torcher to let this thing lay here and not sew it. up!

I went for the meader, one square at a time. Once big sections started to finish up I couldn’t stop squealing! Ek! I’m really doing it! I left tails long so I could bury them later in the traditional way.

Even though I spray basted this quilt, I found the edges of the blanket were tough to meander as the fabric was wanting to flip on me so I ended up pining them down and that fixed the problem beautifully. I treated myself to these unicorns pins by Tula, because, well, unicorns + pink obviously.

The meandering turns this gingham back into something extra special. A pattern on the back also helps hide any oopsies - they happen!

The final touch…. a heart on the corner. To create this heart I used water-soluble paper and used ALL the tiny scraps from the project. If you’d like to create a signature detail like mine check out my tutorial how to make a heart like this! You can find the tutorial on youtube here.

May you find your own canvas to create on in the everyday things you do today. Have a great week.

xx

Kirbi