Free Motion for Beginners – More Holiday Fun
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. […]
Read MoreFree 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 and making holiday decorations and last minute quilty gifts. Put your newly gained […]
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Free Motion for Beginners – More Leaves
More leaves are falling here in North Carolina and the air is crisp and clear. Since leaves are such a popular quilting motif, I thought we might explore some more designs, using more leaves. Vines Meandering leafy vines make great edge-to-edge designs, or a fill design for any shape on your quilt. You can […]
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Free Motion for Beginners – Leaves
We are going to stick with our S shape again and keep creating new designs with it. It’s the perfect shape for quilting leaves. We all love to quilt organic designs on our quilts, flowers, leaves, etc. Organic images are very forgiving. No two leaves in nature are exactly alike. So you don’t have to […]
Read MoreFree Motion Quilting For Beginners – Backtrack Spiral
Last week we got started with the spiral, hook or swirl shape. This week we will talk about another kind of spiral. I call it the backtrack spiral. Instead of spiraling in, and then splitting the path you created to spiral out, you will backtrack spiral back out. Or in other words, you will stitch […]
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Free Motion Quilting for Beginners – Spirals
Moving on in our series on free motion quilting this week to our next shape, spirals (or hooks). We can really have some fun with this shape. It works for so many quilts. Like a meander, depending on the scale you choose, it can create a fabulous all over edge-to-edge quilting design or a fantastic […]
Read MoreFree Motion Quilting for Beginners – For Real
I know you have been practicing every day for 15 minutes. You raised your right hand and made that promise. I saw you. I’m getting lots of comments from folks who are finding it to be very effective in improving their skills and it makes me so happy to hear that! It’s super easy to […]
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Free Motion Quilting for Beginners – Getting Loopy
Back for more free-motion quilting this week! It’s time to try our hand at loops. I think that loopy designs are the most forgiving and the easiest to quilt. Often times with other shapes we have to try really hard to make the shapes uniform in size and proportion in order to make the quilting […]
Read MoreFree Motion Quilting for Beginners – Curvy Designs
Now that you are very comfortable stitching curves, you’re ready to learn some curvy designs. We will put those curves to good use quilting designs you’ll use over and over. Block Designs Let’s start with some simple block designs. Here’s the block we will quilt: Continuous Curve And here’s the design: Notice that it is […]
Read MoreFree Motion Quilting for Beginners – the Secret to Curves
There’s a secret to curves. Well, the secret really applies to all quilting shapes, but it works especially well on curves. Curves make up 97.35% of the best quilting designs. Take a look at any collection of quilts and pay close attention to the quilting. You will see curves on almost every quilt. Curves C-shapes, […]
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