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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Filled Grids

We are back this week to our discussion of grid-work. Next up are filled grids. When you want maximum texture on your quilts, filled grids are the way to go. Whenever parts of the grid framework are stitched and other parts are left un-stitched the result is texture. Why? Stitching tamps down the batting and […]

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Skill Sets

If you have been following along with our Free Motion Quilting for Beginners series, you already know the importance of practice for gaining FMQ skills. I like to think of practice time as play time. It’s stress-free quilting time. Time to bond with your machine. No worries about making mistakes. No worries about getting out […]

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My Australia, Helen Godden’s Masterpiece

There is an amazing, fabulous, HUGE quilt hanging at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Brisbane, Australia this weekend.  My Australia was created by our Handi Quilter Ambassador, Helen Godden. She drew the design in 2018 but with her busy life of teaching, lecturing and traveling, she wondered when she would ever have time to actually […]

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Practice with Purpose

If you’ve been following along our free motion quilting for beginners series, you know how important practice is.  And you probably have a pile of quilted fabric that you’re not quite sure what to do with. Some of them you’ll want to toss. Maybe you breathed new life into a piece by adding a second […]

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Swirly Grid Design

We have used all the shapes to make continuous grid designs except for the swirl (or hook). So today we will dive deep into the swirly grid design. The Swirl Remember the swirl or hook for the 5 basic shapes? Like the S shape from last week, we need to make some modifications to the […]

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More Grid Designs

Last time, we took our grid work to a new level by using more of the basic shapes. We followed the same path using the grid. It’s time for more grid designs! Using the S shape and the (mostly) same path. I saved this shape  and the hook for last because they are a bit […]

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UNCOVERED: The Ken Burns Collection and Handi Quilter

UNCOVERED: The Ken Burns Collection Prolific film-maker and documentarian Ken Burns loves antique American quilts. “Uncovered: The Ken Burns Collection” showcases 26 colorful historic American quilts, dating from the 1850s to the 1940s. The exhibit is on loan from the private collection of the legendary documentarian. UNCOVERED, The Ken Burns Collection is at the Riverfront […]

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Grid Designs – Level Up

Now that you know how to complete a continuous curve design, it’s time to level up our grid work. And it will be simple to do! We started with a curve, one of the five basic shapes. We can use the other four shapes using the same stitch path as we did for continuous curve. […]

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Grid Designs – Free Motion Quilting for Beginners

Recently, there was an HQ Watch and Learn Show about quilting grid designs. Wait, what? You haven’t heard about HQ Watch and Learn? Every Tuesday at noon Mountain time (2pm Eastern, 1pm Central, 11am Pacific, 7pm London, 5am Wednesday Melbourne, Australia) we present a video on our Facebook page. It’s entertaining, informative and inspirational! If […]

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