Free Motion for Beginners – Holiday Fun

I think I have recovered from teaching and working at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. So now we can throw ourselves into full holiday preparedness mode.

Are you ready for this? Now is the time for finishing up those gift quilts, making holiday decorations, and creating last-minute quilty gifts. Put your newly gained skills quilting the 5 basic shapes to good use and try out some holiday-themed motifs for free-motion quilting.

Holiday Leaf Quilting Designs

We have been creating lots of leaves on our quilts lately, and there’s no reason to stop. There are some special holiday leaves that are fun and easy to quilt.

Photo by lum3n on Pexels

How to Quilt Holly Leaves

Holly can be quilted with simple curves. Start with a slightly curved line. Make it the length you want your holly leaf to be.

Add three curves going back toward the start.

Cross over the original curved line and add three more curves, ending at the right side of the original line.

You have a holly leaf!

Note that this design starts on the left and ends on the right. That means it is repeatable! Why is that so exciting? You can do lots of things with a repeatable motif like this.

Make a string of holly leaves and you can fill a border or sashing. Simply start with one holly leaf and repeat the motif as many times as you need to fill your space.

Pro tip: Holly leaves, just like all leaves, are organic. No two are alike! They can be different sizes and shapes, and they all look great. No stress here! Notice the center lines are not perfectly straight; they are just a very slight curve. Vary the way that curve turns—up or down—randomly along your string of leaves.

To make your holly extra jolly, add in some circles here and there for berries. You can place two or three berries in a cluster between leaves. Make it random.

Another idea is to mark a large meandering line over your quilt and add holly leaves to it for an all-over edge-to-edge design, like we did in this blog post.

Use the meandering line as the center vein of your leaves. But don’t quilt the line first; quilt it as you quilt each leaf.

How to Quilt Mistletoe

Another iconic holiday leaf is mistletoe.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Pexels

Notice the shape of the mistletoe leaf: an elongated teardrop. A teardrop is like a long, tall loop with a narrow base and a wider head.

Quilt this like a vine, adding in berries—circles—randomly. The berries are usually in clusters; two or three together work well for a quilting design. Remember, quilting designs are not literal depictions of an image or thing, but rather a simplified version.

Just like holly, you can make the mistletoe meander to fill areas of your quilt or quilt an all-over edge-to-edge pattern.

How to Quilt a Poinsettia

Photo by kstankss on Pexels

This popular holiday flower is a great design for blocks. It uses the lazy S shape.

Start with a swirl for the center and add leaves around it made with the lazy S shape. I find that five leaves is a good number for the first round. But there are no rules! If your flower has fewer or more, it’s all good.

Then add more leaves—or bracts, which is the real name—around that first round. You might have to do a little overstitching, traveling along the leaves you already quilted.

You can keep going, adding as many rounds as you like—or need—to fill in your space.

Stay tuned for more holiday fun designs!

By Mary Beth Krapil