Beginning Quilting

Free Motion for Beginners – More Holiday Fun

December 4, 2021

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Stuffed like a turkey with Thanksgiving treats? Ready to get to work on more holiday fun designs? This time around let’s learn a useful technique that can be used on any quilt, anywhere, anytime. It’s so versatile, and yet allows you to personalize the quilt. It’s simple, but maybe something you’ve never thought about doing. Let’s call it, “Anything E2E”.

E2E

E2E is quilt code for edge-to-edge.

Edge to edge quilting utilizes a continuous line design that is stitched all over the quilt from one edge to the other without regard to piecing, blocks or borders.

It’s the best way to quilt quilts made with busy fabrics where the quilting will not readily show.

If you want to finish a quilt fast, E2E is the way to go.

Anything E2E

It’s fun to incorporate motifs into your quilting. Anything E2E uses motifs and connecting shapes. Let’s start with something we already know: holly leaves. If you don’t know, check out this post to learn about quilting holly leaves.

We made strings of holly leaves to fill borders and sashings and to meander around on our quilts. Often we see holly leaves in clusters of 2 or 3 combined with berries.

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We can use this motif in our Anything E2E technique. It’s simple. Stitch the motif then choose a flowing continuous line shape to connect it to another of the same motif. And keep going filling the quilt from edge to edge.

Let’s try it with holly clusters and loops. It might look something like this:

line drawing of holly e2e

I can meander all over my quilt with this design and fill the whole thing Edge to Edge, side to side, top to bottom.

Take note

There are a few things to notice about this design.

1. The motif (holly) is facing in different directions.

2. The motif is many different sizes.

3. The loops face in  different directions.

4. The loops are different sizes.

These things are intentional!  This way I can fill in spaces as needed and it won’t look funny if I have to make a loop bigger or a holly smaller to fill the space. If I made them all the same and one was different, it would stand out like a sore thumb. Making them different sizes and directions not only adds interest to the design, it makes it easier to quilt. You don’t have to worry about uniformity. No stress!

Quilting the motif

Anytime you want to quilt a Anything E2E you have to start with knowing how to quilt the motif. You also need to pick a spot where you will enter and exit the motif.

Here’s how to quilt the holly cluster. I chose the berries as my enter/exit point.

Start by stitching 3 circles. (The green line is where you would stitch if coming from a previous holly cluster)

stitchpath for holly berries

 

 

Travel along the edge of the circles to stitch 3 holly leaves (notice there are no veins this time).

Travel along the edge of the circles to come out and head towards some loops and your next holly cluster. (red line).

stitch path for holly leaves

 

Use your loops (you know how to quilt loops) to move the design in the direction you want to go to fill up the quilt.

line drawing of holly e2e

More ideas

photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels

Gingerbread men are a nice simple shape to quilt! And those little guys are full of holiday fun.

Photo by George Dolgikh @ Giftpundits.com from Pexels

Candy Canes!

 

photo of Christmas Star ornaments
Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

And stars!

There are plenty of simple shapes that inspire thoughts of holiday fun.

holiday fun cookies
Photo by Jonathan Meyer from Pexels

Come back next week to learn some pro tips for quilting Anything E2E designs.

In the meantime Happy Quilting!

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December 4th, 2021

Stuffed like a turkey with Thanksgiving treats? Ready to get to work on more holiday fun designs? This time around let’s learn a useful technique that can be used on […]

3 responses to “Free Motion for Beginners – More Holiday Fun”

  1. Thank you Mary Beth…such a cute design. I could even create a design with a mix of leaves, gingerbread men, stars and candy canes. With a longarm I could make my own pantograph also. Thanks for the inspiration!

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