Step 1 – In the right hand top corner of your quilt, presser foot down, drop your needle and raise it back up. Go ahead and drop your feed dogs and get the correct foot adjusted on your machine. It will be very similar in looks to other presser feet. It might not have a cord like the one I show in my video. It will have a circle or maybe a partial circle. You will also need a darning/quilting foot.
Read your manual to get a better idea if you need to. It will look a little different on every machine. On my Juki, it’s a switch on the front of my machine. On my old Janome, it was a switch on the back of my machine that I just moved to the other side. On my Bernina, that button is on the side of my machine and I just have to push it in. To drop it there will be a button or a lever. It means you move the quilt where you want it to move, instead of the backward and forward movement your machine does for you. By dropping it, you take the movement of your quilt out of your machine’s hands and put it into your own. The feed dog is the “teeth” right below your presser foot. The crinkly goodness of a quilt will gloss right on over anything.įree motion quilting does require a sewing machine that can drop it’s feed dog. One last thing, I promise you that after you get your quilt washed your ‘mistake’ will be extremely difficult to find. Acknowledge that your quilting will not be perfect (there is no such thing), and just by letting perfection go you’ll feel more comfortable and your expectations will be achievable. Give yourself some space to make mistakes.
Still, working on a 10″ fabric sandwich is nothing like working with a whole throw size quilt. After I was done, I turned all those 10″ fabric sandwiches into pot holders. I played around with quilting designs and just got a feel for the movement I needed to make to accomplish a decent meander.
When I was first learning to FMQ a meander, I made several fabric sandwiches with 10″ squares. If you prefer to practice first that’s fine too. After all the thinking we have done to get this quilt where it is now, a little less thinking might be just what you need. It doesn’t require too much thought and maybe you’ll even find it relaxing and therapeutic. The pattern I’ll use is the most basic of basics, a simple meander. Today, I’m going to show you one method called ‘free motion quilting / FMQ’. Like all things there is more than one way to accomplish this task. Quilting is the “glue” that holds everything together. The top and bottom would separate after washing. If you didn’t add quilting to your quilt you would end up with a saggy blanket. Starting in the middle, stitch an entire circle-returning to your middle point (In the photo below there is a faintly drawn “X” where I began the left-most circle.) After you return to your starting point, stitch over your previous stitches and sew another half circle…(You are actually stitching a circle and a half for every pattern…) In the image below, I stitched a bit off the first line of stitching so you would be able to see the second row of stitching, but normally, I try to stitch directly on top of my previous line of stitching.Įach circle is actually a circle and a half.The definition of quilting is the act of stitching three layers together: your top, batting and backing. Start with two drawn lines or “rails” to help keep the circles in a row. They require both doodling and stitched practice, but they are WORTH the EFFORT! There are oo-oodles of circle motifs. Like most very “simple” patterns, circles require more precision. Circles look easy, but are a little more difficult to stitch-(Don’t fear-YOU CAN do it!).
(See the table runner here.) The Fabulous Flower looks complicated, but it is quite easy. Last week we stitched the Fabulous Flower and a table runner that included the Fabulous Flower and rows of One-Pass Circles.
Welcome to all the new followers of The Inbox Jaunt! We are delighted that you have found our little circle of quilters! In order to celebrate our ever-expanding ring of friends and followers, today we have free motion quilted circles! We will be working on two types of circles: The first circle is the One-Pass Circle and the second is called the Two-Pass Circle.