4 Best Free Motion Designs for Beginners | New Quilter Tips

4 Best Free Motion Designs for Beginners | New Quilter Tips

“What is the best free motion design that’s easy for a new quilter?” I get this question almost on the daily! If you ask 10 quilters, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. It’s a matter of opinion and most quilters will share the design they are most comfortable stitching. Today, I’m sharing my advice (and […]

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5 Classic Easy Free Motion Designs – Part 2

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 […]

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5 Classic Easy Free Motion Designs – Part 1

5 Classic Easy Free Motion Designs – Part 1

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 […]

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The Finish – Christmas Countdown Quilt-A-Long with Helen Godden

The Finish – Christmas Countdown Quilt-A-Long with Helen Godden

At the start of December 2022 our friend, Helen Godden, started her annual Christmas Countdown Quilt-a-long. Helen is our Handi Quilter Ambassador who lives in Australia. She’s an accomplished artist and a superb stationary machine quilter. I decided to join in the quilt-a-long and take you all along with me. So today I will share […]

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Perfection

With this series of posts about free-motion quilting for beginners, I have been emphasizing the importance of practice. I encourage all my students to quilt every day. I think of practice not as attempting to achieve perfection, but of attempting to improve. It is a way of generating new ideas and trying new techniques. Sometimes […]

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Taking off on a Diagonal Tangent

Last week we used a diagonal path for filling a grid. Let’s take off on a tangent and try a few new things with using diagonal quilting combined with grids. I like to try to find a way to quilt a design that makes it easy to stitch AND gives me great looking results. Win-win! […]

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Fun with Loops and Grids

We filled half-square triangles with loops to create some fun texture. Now let’s get a a little crazy and create some more fun with loops. Work on the diagonal It’s time to branch out and try a little something different. Rather than travel horizontally or even vertically, we can choose a diagonal stitch path. We’ll […]

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Loops and Grids

Did you happen to catch the July 5, 2022 HQ Watch and Learn on Facebook? More grid work! You can watch it here.  Kristina used loops in one of her examples. And I promised to do some grid designs with loops this week!  Let’s start by talking through Kristina’s design. Break Up Your Grid Instead […]

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More Filled Grid Variations – Swirl

Last week we filled grids with straight lines, curves and S-shapes. That leaves two more of the 5 basic shapes to create even more filled grid variations, swirl and loop. Swirl The swirl is a fun one to quilt because it flows so easily. If you are not proficient at quilting swirls, remember to practice […]

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Filled Grid Variations

Now that you’ve got the basics of filled grids from our last post, it’s time to kick it up a notch and explore some filled grid variations. If you’ve been following along with this Free Motion Quilting for Beginners series, I bet you can guess what I’m going to say next. IYKYK.  If you’re new […]

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