Free Motion1/16/2024 I always wear Machingers Quilting Gloves because they help me grip the quilt surface and move it smoothly over the machine. You can see what I mean in this video with Josh from the Building Blocks Quilt Along:Ī few tools can definitely make free motion quilting easier. Quilt a whole lot of ugly stitches and eventually your hands and feet will figure out how to work together to make pretty stitches. I call this the ugly stitching phase and it’s something you just have to plow through in order to become a skilled free motion quilter. Until you learn how to maintain a steady speed between your hands and your foot pedal, your quilting isn’t going to look very pretty. You may have a spot of itsy bitsy stitches, then a massive chunky stitch. They’re not going to look consistently sized and evenly spaced the way they look for walking foot quilting. In conclusion, your stitches aren’t going to look perfect when you first start free motion quilting. This means that the stitches you produce in free motion are entirely up to you and created by balancing the speed of your hands moving with the speed of your needle bouncing up and down. So that is what makes free motion quilting feel so odd when you first get started – the machine is no longer doing the work for you. This quilting technique uses your machine in a totally different way so that most of the things you can usually depend on like consistent stitch length and the fabric feeding evenly through the machine no longer happen. Knot the pairs of thread ends (I use a granny knot) and use a sewing needle to bury the threads between the layers of the quilt.I can’t emphasize enough how weird free motion quilting is. Use a pin to pull the bobbin thread all the way through to the top. Pull the top thread tight so that it lifts up the bobbin thread to form a little loop. To do this, trim both top and bottom threads leaving a 10cm tail. Your shoulders will thank you for it.Īt the last stitch, pull up the bobbin thread. ![]() I like to give an extra stitch to secure sharp corners. Practice on a spare quilt sandwich until you feel comfortable with this. You’re aiming for aconsistent stitch length, so the slower your stitch speed, the slower you move the fabric, and vice versa. Move the fabric smoothly and evenly under the machine. Hold the bobbin and top threads when you start stitching to avoid messy knotted clumps of thread underneath. Use a pin in the loop to pull the bobbin thread all the way to the top. ![]() ![]() Pull the top thread tight so that it lifts the bobbin thread up through the quilt to form a little loop. To do this, lower the sewing machine needle and then raise it again (half a stitch). Raise the bobbin thread to the top of the quilt before you start stitching. You may also wish to match top and bobbin threads so that any slight tension issues are less obvious. Test it on a sample - you want to adjust it so that you don’t get stitch loops showing on either side of the quilt. (My husband set my sewing machine into my sewing table for this purpose - it makes it so much easier to move your quilt around under your machine.ĭrop the feed dogs and adjust the tension (I always need to drop mine to about 2 on my machine). You can stack books around your machine to create a bigger ‘work table’ at the level of the machine. Use an open embroidery foot for good visibility.įind as big a surface as possible.
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