5 Classic Easy Free Motion Designs – Part 2

Back in August Kim showed 5 classic free motion designs on our Watch and Learn Show. You can watch the video on our YouTube channel here.

Have you seen the Watch and Learn videos? They premier every Tuesday at noon Mountain time on our Facebook page. If you can’t watch the premier, you can always watch on demand right there on our Facebook page and also on out YouTube channel. If you haven’t seen them yet, schedule a binge night for yourself soon! You’ll be glad you did. We post videos on all sorts of topics related to quilting. The studio educators, and their guests, share tons of information and inspiration in these videos.

We know that some of you learn better by watching and others learn better by reading. So I’ll go over the 5 designs shared in the video with tips on how to quilt them.

We learned about Swirls and Ribbon Candy in last week’s post. This week we’ll tackle the last 3 designs, Waves and Pearls, ZigZag and Wishbone.

Waves and Pearls

Waves are a fun easy design to quilt. Start with S-shapes laying on their sides and just flow along in a wavy motion. Go back and forth to fill in your space.

Now let’s kick it up a notch by adding in some pearls (circles) every now and again along the lines of your waves.

To quilt the pearls, go around the circle once.

Then overstitch half of the circle.

Continue on to stitch the next circle. going around 1 and 1/2 times, just like the first one.

I left gaps in the drawing so that you can see the path. Your actual stitching should have no gaps.

When you have as many pearls as you want, continue on with more waves. Go forward and back to fill in your space. Try not to stack the pearls on top of one another. Vary where you put them so they are randomly distributed.

Pro-tip: add in different shapes to replace the pearls. How about tiny loops? Or a zig-zag? Give it a try during your daily practice, you never know what cool design you’ll come up with!

Zig-zag

Speaking of zig-zag, that’s the next design Kim shows on the video. It is a versatile design that fills in small sashings or narrow borders perfectly.

Easy to quilt. Simple straight lines. You can use a ruler or go free motion. If your space is less than 2 inches it is pretty easy to do straight lines free motion. Longer than that, I would use a ruler.

Pro-tip: When quilting designs with points (like a zig-zag) always have your machine set for Cruise mode and pause in the points. That short pause allows the machine to take a stitch right in the point and you”ll get a nice sharp point every time.

Use the seam lines of the narrow border as your guide. Touch the seam each time and you’ll get even zigs and zags.

Wishbone

Last but not least is wishbone. Another easy design that flows. It consists of simple loops that alternate, one down and one up.

Start with a single loop.

Move on to the next loop in the other direction.

And continue along your path alternating direction of your loops.

A mantra is helpful for alternating designs like this. Up-down-up-down or left-right-left-right would work.

You can change up the size or shape of your loops to get a different look. Like fat loops:

Or tall loops with tiny heads:

Be sure to have some fun practicing these designs. They will come in handy for lots of quilts.

Quilt Every Day!

by Mary Beth Krapil