Free-Motion Quilting Decisions and a Printed Panel

From the Sewing Room: Printed Panels and Free-Motion Quilting.

I have been free-motion quilting for a while now. It’s probably 4 years or so since I crawled out of my ditch and started being more adventurous in this way. 😉 But I have just discovered something that I wish I had thought of right at the beginning! And that something is pre-printed fabric panels.

Yes, I knew they existed….. But I have been a patchwork and appliqué snob and I have shunned them. Because I didn’t appreciate the benefits of putting my patchwork aside for a bit and developing my free-motion skills in a way that would let me put all my focus into the free-motion quilting part of a project. And this week I learnt a thing or two. Because I was forced to quilt a pre-printed panel….. and I liked it!

Got my free-motion quilting up and going again

This week I have been concentrating on colour boards and fabric mosaics, triggered by the Summer Crush contest from Stitched in Color. This resulted in 4 colour blog posts and was a lot of fun, but left much less time for sewing than usual. So, to stay happy and in touch with my sewing room, I pulled out a quick project that I have been avoiding a little. My next charity quilt.

The next charity quilt on my list was a child’s printed panel. It was all pinned and ready to go, but it just wasn’t going. Partly because I was out of the mindset of quilting because I have been sewing tumbling blocks patchwork lately instead. Partly because I had no idea what pattern to quilt on it. And a big partly because it will go to a very sick baby with seriously stressed out parents. I have been that parent in the past, and I didn’t want to think about it. All these things added up to a serious lack of momentum.

Teddy bears charity quilt — My latest charity quilt – a teddy bear panel

But I wanted to take a show-and-tell to my next Handiquilter Club meeting on Friday, so I fired up the Sweet Sixteen and got started. I knew I needed to outline the main motifs of the print. I knew I wanted hearts in the aqua border and I knew I wanted some texture contrast between the sections, but I didn’t know what.

When you don’t know where to start, start with what you know

It is my experience that ideas flow better when you are creating rather than thinking. So I started. I outlined the big bears in brown. Then I outlined the little bears and balloons in white by travelling around the inside of the string of motifs and then the outside. Once I had done this I decided to add free-motion quilting in the area between the aqua border and the balloons in a motif I know well. I did loop-de-loops, with the occasional little heart thrown in. That went quite well.

Loop-de-loop free-motion quilting with hearts — Looping stipple free-motion quilting with hearts

I hope you can see the quilting…. it is there mostly for texture. Here’s a diagram of the basic idea….

loops and hearts — Loops and hearts quilting plan

Now my confidence was up. I removed a stack of pins, which made the quilt easier to handle and also look better. And I recognised that the memories of my baby being in hospital in intensive care upset me less when I was working on the quilt than when I was anticipating working on it. Of course, thinking about the thinking was worse than the thinking! Anyway, at this point I felt inspired to fill the background with straight lines to show off the bears.

Straight line quilting to produce diamond grid in background of quilt.

The print has a grid of yellow and aqua flowers and I considered joining the flowers to form a diamond grid. But then I decided to make the flowers the centre of each diamond by quilting straight lines between them. I marked the lines with a hera marker (I am seriously scared of marking white quilts with wash-out pens). Then I free-motion quilted the lines in white thread. I wish I had a quilting ruler….. and knew how to use it! But I got by.

Hearts in the border – testing a new free-motion quilting motif

About the only thing I knew right from when I first unfolded this little quilt for a first look, was that I wanted to do a heart motif in the aqua-coloured border.

A browse through my Quilting to Admire and Inspire board on Pinterest turned up a useful idea. It is this double heart leaf vine motif from Lori Kennedy.

double heart leaf vine from Lori Kennedy — Double heart leaf vine motif from Lori Kennedy’s blog, The Inbox Jaunt.

I didn’t want the extra petals inside the hearts, and I had to decide how I was going to turn the corners, but this was a great launching place. Thanks Lori! The design I settled on after several drafts looked like this.

heart border doodle — How I eventually decided to turn the corners with the Heart Vine motif

I used chalk to place guidelines on the quilt top.

Here is the border quilted onto the baby quilt.

My hearts border free-motion quilting motif

I finished the long ends of the quilt with straight parallel lines to the edges, cut off the excess and sewed the binding onto the front of the quilt. The binding will be finished by hand by another quilter. I hope this little quilt does a little good in a bad situation. ♥♥♥

Clever Chameleon logo in blue Maybe next time I might go into more details on my thoughts of why I should have started quilting fabric panels a long time ago. And one reason I can think of as to why I didn’t. What is your experience of pre-printed “quilt tops”? Let me know in the comments below!

Until we chat again, go Quilt Your Own Story!

P.S. The follow-up blog post, where I did actually get around to arranging my thoughts on printed quilt panels, is here: 7 reasons to Quilt Printed Fabric Panels.

P.P.S. Linking up this week with The Quilting Room with Mel. Visit the linky party for more great new projects on the web this week.

June 23, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room – The Daisy Motif

Learn how to quilt this informal daisy motif onto large, pieced quilt squares.

Remember how I said I was going to start doing some charity quilting to increase my quilting practice without using up my entire quilting budget? Today I plucked up the courage to start on my first charity quilt. There is a part of me that was a bit concerned that the owners of the quilt top may not be enthralled by whatever I did. I am not a professional quilter, after all. They have already invested their time and money into this quilt – what if I did bad things to it?! But that attitude will not get quilts into the hand of recipients or practice into my quilting muscles, so I took a few deep breaths and this is what happened….

Choosing a quilting motif

I quickly discovered one interesting thing. Apparently I think a lot about quilting a quilt while I am piecing it. It was quite a new experience to decide how to quilt a piece without weeks of prior musing. I can’t say I was prepared for how different it felt to be handling a quilt I was not intimately familiar with. Has anyone else experienced this?!

Coffee and TimTams charity quiit all pinned — The beautiful quilt I received to quilt. It arrived thoroughly pin basted and ready to go.

The quilt I have been entrusted with has chocolate brown pieced squares with cream coloured sashing. I like to think of it as Coffee and TimTams (an Australian chocolate biscuit). My daughter argues that it is actually Maltesers and Milo (more Australiana). But anyway, at first glance I assumed it was a man’s quilt and instantly thought to quilt a strong geometric design on it. But on closer inspection I discovered that the fabric prints were predominately floral. So I decided that this little beauty needed something feminine in the way of quilting to bring out it’s gentle side.

While I got my head around this thought, I stabilised the quilt by stitching in the ditch in every sashing seam (ie every seam except those inside the brown boxes).

Stabilised quilt — Coffee and TimTams is a 5×5 grid of squares measuring around 6″. The quilt is 47″ square

Working up the Daisy Motif

The process of stabilising the quilt thankfully helped me feel more connected to the quit and able to decide how to proceed. One of my priorities was to leave the quilt feeling soft and comforting. Eventually I decided that I wanted to fill the the boxes with a simple flower motif. Before I attempted this though, I did two things. Firstly, I mocked up a digital example on Inkscape software to see what it might look like.

Digital trial of daisy motif — I started with photos of two representative blocks. Then I drew a basic circle and petal design. Finally I decided to fill in the centre spiral and place a line in the centre of each petal.

Secondly, once I was happy with this design, I got out a good old fashioned pen and paper to see how I could quilt the daisy motif as a continuous design.

First attempts at daisy motif — First: I tried drawing the petals and then filling in the centre in one pass. As you can see, it wasn’t a huge success. The petals aren’t nicely formed and the centres are jagged.

Second attempt at daisy motif — Next: I tried drawing the spiral centres first, then the petal outlines and then going back to fill in the petal centre lines. This is better, but the double outline is busy, and escaping the block looks messy.

Third attempt at daisy motif — This time I did the same as my second attempt, but just traced the original centre circle when I returned to add lines to the petals. Much simpler and tidier.

If you would like to learn this design by first tracing it, you can download a free pdf of the daisy motif here: Daisy motif free printable.

Quilting the Daisy Motif

To get the daisy motif to show up better against the mildly busy fabrics of this quilt I opted for a rayon (40wt) thread in antique white for the top thread. In the bobbin I had 80wt cotton/poly thread.

Step One: use chalk to mark thirds on the centre fabric of the block. Quilt the stem of the daisy and the centre circle. Fill in the spiral now, if you want one.

Step Two: Quilt the petals clockwise out to the edge of the block. Stop each petal just short of block edges and the centre circle – this looks neater than accidentally crossing the lines.

Step Three: Once all the petals are outlined, fill in the centre line of each petal by travelling anti-clockwise around the centre circle.

Step Four: If you have forgotten to do the spiral, you have another opportunity to fill it in now. Otherwise, exit the block by completing the other side of the stem.

Finished daisy motif — The finished daisy quilting motif

A Bonus Variation of the Daisy Motif

In every second block, I didn’t add the centre spiral – so I have some open and some filled flowers. Truth be told, this is largely because I forgot to quilt the spiral into one of the flowers early on. Then I decided I liked the variation…. so now it’s a feature! Hahahahaha!

quilting spiral quilting In the sashing I did a simple leaf vine with the same thread combo. It is very nearly invisible but it gives a good overall texture. I left the star fabric squares un-quilted and filled the outer border with quick perpendicular lines. And finally, I put spirals in the four corners to echo the flower centres.

So, that’s it. Quilting completed, and quilt ready to hand to the next volunteer willing to do the binding!

Here is the finished product!

Finished daisy motif quilt

Do more quilting practice; without going crazy (or broke)!

There are three strategies I use to “trick” myself into getting more quilting practice.

I have recently bought myself a new machine, and I really need to become friends with it fairly rapidly. But, as I mentioned in my last post about quilting, I am hopeless at practising my quilting, especially when that quilting practice is purely for the sake of practice. Don’t get me wrong, I think quilting practice is a brilliant idea, and I highly recommend it. It is just that I never actually get around to doing it.

So, I pondered recently: “Why this is?” And I have decided:

Unfinished quilts abound at my place. I love all of these projects, but they remain unfinished for various reasons.

Like most of you, I am busy. Non-urgent, non-critical activities tend to fall by the wayside. including in the sewing room. My quilts are quilted to deadlines, such as birthdays. Quilts without deadlines often end up as UFOs. Pure practice falls into an even lower priority category than UFOs! Deadlines are key!
Fabric is expensive in Australia, even the rubbish quality stuff. Occasionally I actually do go into my sewing room with the intention of practising. But then I balk at making a AU$10+ (US$7) fat-quarter practice quilt sandwich from my pretties. (This is a cheap estimate of the value of a fat quarter-sized quilt sandwich at retail prices here). And as often as not, I just walk out again. Essentially, I resent the monetary cost of practice.
I am a goal and progress-driven person, and I am not actually very good with exercises that don’t have a concrete end point. I get “quilter’s block” when faced with a blank quilt sandwich. And I have very little patience for tasks that have no greater purpose than practice. I hope some of you can identify with this! I suspect I am not alone, and I think this reason is really the main reason why I do not practise quilting very often.

So then I wondered: “What can I do to fix this? How can I get more quilting practice without the mental torture and budget blowout?”

Well, I have decided that to cause more quilting practice to happen, I have to play to my personality strengths and my situation. And these are: I thrive on goals. I love to help other people out. I have little desire to keep the crafted objects I make, as the creative journey and the gifting have always been my strongest motivators. And finally, I have to keep costs down (don’t we all?!). So there are three things I am now deliberately doing to incorporate more quilting practice into my life.

The solutions

To get more quilting practice into my life without causing a blowout in available time and harming my quilting budget I have:

Found a quilting group to be accountable to.
Combined my quilting budget with my gifting budget when this makes sense.
Signed up to help a local charity quilting group.

Finding a quilting group to be accountable to

I have started meeting regularly with other quilters who have a formal show-and-tell regime, and an optional homework schedule. This gives me both the deadlines I need and a broad goal. My need for a purpose is satisfied without adding too much stress, because I can choose not to participate in any particular exercise. Here’s one small project already completed from this new motivation: the Dandelion Wishes appliqué.

If you can’t access a similar local quilting group, you can get the same outcome by committing to a quilt-along online and staying on schedule. Here’s a free project by Lori Kennedy, where you are encouraged to practice multiple quilting motifs.

Leah Day also has quilt-alongs that cover lots of quilting skills, although hers will cost you monthly for the pattern. I am sure you can find a quilt-along to suit your needs with a fairly simple internet search.

Combining my gift and quilting budgets for more spending power

I have started thinking more strategically about combining my quilting practice with gifting. Some people like to turn their practice sandwiches into gifts.…. such as quilt-as-you-go lap quilts, small bags, purses, placemats, heat pads etc. Well, instead, I am now turning my gifts into practice sandwiches. This means that I start with the person and the gift in mind. Then I work out how to incorporate the quilting practice I want/need to do into the construction of that gift.

Project for a friend designed in part for feather quilting practice For instance, this last month when I needed to practice my feathers, I sat down and designed a cushion (throw pillow) that my friend with an imminent birthday would really love. Then I worked out how to quilt it with feathers. The feathers happened because her birthday was the deadline. There was no blank quilt sandwich to spook me, there was a very good purpose for the exercise, and no “wasted” fabric. Perfect!

Charity quilting benefits you and others

Pin-basted quilt ready for stabilisation I have just signed up to help a local quilt charity quilt their quilts. This means that someone else makes a quilt top and pays for the fabric and batting to make the quilt. When I receive it, it is already basted and my job is to quilt it. So I will hopefully get a great deal of quilting experience for the price of the thread and my time. There is a loose deadline, and a very good purpose. And as an extra bonus I get experience trying to decide on quilting patterns for quilts that are outside my usual style. If you are looking to strengthen your quilting skills I strongly recommend finding a quilting charity group to donate some time to. You, the charity group and the quilt recipients will all win!

I have just received my first basted charity quilts, and I will keep you posted on that quilting journey – update: read about the start of that journey here.

I hope you have found more motivation to practice your quilting. You at least have three less excuses for not practising your quilting now!

So – go quilt something!….. after you have shared with us what keeps You motivated to practice your quilting and adding to your quilt story.