Finished your quilt top and ready to quilt? Continue reading for 10 quilting designs for beginners perfect for your first quilt!
I sure hope you have learned a thing or two along the way with this series. If you just joined us, start from the beginning.
The best way to get perfect quilting is to transfer quilting designs onto the quilt top before stitching. Continue reading to see how!
For all of us machine quilters who are looking for some new ideas for quilting designs, this is a wonderful new book by Cindy Seitz-Krug, an award winning quilter and teacher who uses her home machine for quilting, published by AQS. What is great about this book and a bit different is how effortlessly the "workbook" idea leads you through all kinds of lovely designs, shows you how to break them down into simple do-able elements that are controlled by a marked grid. Sometimes in the end you see the grid, others times only curvy lines and designs that make the viewer ask "how in the world was that done???" Below, details of Cindy's quilting: The designs are great, but all the options she shows us with size, color of thread, scale of design, where and how to use them really help when trying to figure out what design to use where in a quilt. There are tons of illustrations, diagrams, quilted samples to help you achieve these designs. The workbook idea insures you will be able to start at the beginning, follow along, and get a quilted design by yourself! One of the first grid designs I tried years ago when I was looking for a simpler method for a design of overlapping circles was one I called "Diane-shiko" (below) as it was a new way to mark and quilt an old Sashiko design. When the marked lines are removed the circles emerge so it looks as if you quilted circles. This is the basic idea Cindy uses to create all sorts of designs with the grid to guide you. Above you can see the 1/2" marked grid, and the stitching around the lines to form this timeless design. Below, the design used in one of my quilts, "Shadows of Umbria," which Cindy also has featured in her new book. A grid design will showcase curvy designs with its formality and regularity. These designs look difficult but many are absolutely beginner level and with some practice you'll be adding many of Cindy's designs, methods, ideas to your own quilts. Visit Cindy at her website and blog to find out more: www.quintessentialquilting.com Below, one more peek at her quilting: If you were in some of my last classes I taught a design called "Ginkgo." In Cindy's quilt above she uses it as fill around larger scale designs. Below is one of my samples of this lovely design, and Cindy includes a much easier way to mark and quilt it called "Twisted Ginkgo" in this new book. It's one of my favorite designs ever in the way it looks, and how much fun it is to quilt. I experimented and tried Cindy's method to quilt this design, and it worked perfectly. I'm thrilled she could explain it so well, and the diagrams and photos are exactly what you need so you too can add this design to your skills. Congratulations to Cindy on a great book and for her recent award at Road to California for Excellence in Machine Quilting for her wholecloth quilt "Blush." Hope winter is giving you lots of time to quilt, and to play with ideas on your sewing machine. Keep quilting! Your work gets better every day! Diane
It’s late Friday night, but I didn’t want the day to slip by without sharing a new quilting design this...
Finished your quilt top and ready to quilt? Continue reading for 10 quilting designs for beginners perfect for your first quilt!
Continue reading for 5 meander practice exercises that will help you learn to put FMQ skills on autopilot so you can focus more on quilting.
Melody Crust talks on her blog about the importance of selecting the right quilting pattern to make the most impact on your quilt top. Calling straight line quilting elegant, click HERE to learn mo…
Although it may seem like a regular sewing machine is not capable of free-motion quilting, the truth is you can do it on a sewing machine. Using a regular
I have 25 blocks to share with you in this quilt and I want to show you every single one! Each block tells a story of how my free h...
Video tutorials for freemotion quilting for both longarm quilting machines and sit down domestic sewing machines. Angela Huffman has the tips you need!
I've had the chance to review the book Free Motion Quilting for Beginners (and those who think they can't), by Molly Hanson. I love that title! I'm a big proponent of quilting your own quilts, as you know, and I've read a lot of books about free motion quilting. I like how everyone presents the information in their own personal way....there is always more to learn! This book presents all the practical information you need to get started. More importantly, it gives you the confidence to jump in and give free motion quilting a try. There are 15 projects in the book that encourage you to start small and increase your comfort level with free motion quilting before you tackle something larger, like a quilt. What I love most about this book is Molly's tone of encouragement throughout the text and the projects. She is great at guiding you though the entire process! I've done a lot of free motion quilting and I love how relaxing it can be. I also know how easy it can be to get in a rut. I challenged myself to get out of my box, so to speak and try some new-to-me, designs. I gave this squared off stippling pattern a try and it went pretty well! I had to slow down and think about where I was going from time to time, but it was fun! I could see doing this all over a whole quilt. I also quilted a few swatches of different designs and I turned them into a set of coasters. Binding them was a little fiddly, but totally worth it! (I can say that now that they are done. Ha!) These are great because I not only used scraps of fabric, but scraps of batting as well. Hurray! I'm happy to count these as scrap project #94/101. If you would like the chance to win an e-book copy of Free Motion Quilting for Beginners, please leave me a comment in this post. In your comment, I'd love to hear what your favorite go-to FMQ pattern is. Or, if you are new to FMQ, I'd like to hear what pattern you would like to master. I will pick winner in a few days!
Fear of not liking your quilting plan often contributes to large WIP piles. Continue reading for 5 ways to not over-do FMQ on your next quilt
In this new showcase I present you Marla Varner, Paola Machetta, Irina Malyukova and Iva Steiner enjoy their stories and amazing quilts.
I hate to pick favs but this one is my Favorite of the Trio. Thread - Iris Mint Batting - Hobbs 80/20 Tools - A ton of templates w...
Wholecloth quilt; quilting done with the very thick 12wt Aurifil thread.
While the designs in the center of your quilt often take center stage, your quilt borders deserve some love, too! Here are five of our most popular border design tutorials for you to try.
