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 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 […]
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Free Motion for Beginners – Lazy S
If you practiced the Red Hot Hearts design from last week, you worked really hard. So you deserve a break this week. That Red Hot Hearts design takes good control of your machine and lots of brain power and guidelines to keep the pattern going right. Did you think of a mantra to use to […]
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Free Motion Quilting for Beginners – S shape
Continuing the series on free motion quilting for beginners, this week we will explore the S shape. You remember the shape of the letter S from kindergarten, right? The perfect S with the nice, perfect, counter-clockwise curve at the top that transitions smoothly into the nice, perfect, clockwise curve at the bottom. That perfect shape […]
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 – Start from the beginning
We have come a long way from the beginning of this series about free motion quilting. I sure hope you have learned a thing or two along the way. Are you keeping up with your everyday quilting play? I hope that it becomes a life-long habit. Previous Posts I’ve heard from several folks who have […]
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Free Motion Quilting for Beginners – Stipple
The time has come to talk about stipple. You see it all over the place on quilts. What is a stipple, anyway? Dictionary.com says: Stipple History Dots, small spots, small touches. In the quilting world stipple began with hand quilters. They placed single stitches randomly in the background of an applique or embroidery or a […]
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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