Freemotion-Quilting For Beginners

I have been preparing for another workshop which is scheduled for three days in mid-February. This will be a workshop for beginner freemotion quilters so I had to alter my original workshop outline as it was just too intensive.

 

I have been freemotion-quilting now for a good 13 years and while I do have a general idea on how to start and what to teach I wanted to demystify the journey a bit. Started to do some research on the internet and was very surprised. There are hardly any sites that cater for the beginner...while they all talk about what you need in terms of freemotion-quilting (i.e. set up of machine, gloves, slider, needles etc) I have not found any real assistance in where to start and what to practice, i.e so I can stitch a bit...what now? If I was a beginner I would not know how or what to practice. This was really perplexing and somewhat disappointing. I guess some of the online workshops might address this issue though.

In thinking about this further I really struggled to identify what a beginner needs to learn until I thought further on what particular skill is needed to progress in your freemotion quilting journey. Here is what I did come up, five skills you will need to practice (and ultimately master) if you want to be able to progress and be able to finish those quilts that are waiting in the UFO pile.

1. Ability to stitch a line, either straight or wavy with a somewhat consistent stitch length and the correct tension on the machine, including stopping and starting with minimal wobbles.

Easier said than done. In my workshop we are going to stitch some straightish lines in different directions in a four-patch block, just up and down, then sideways, and for the adventurous also diagonally and discussing how else you could practice that (eg. stitching-in-the-ditch freehand or using the help of a grid). Following on from this we are going to learn how to meander or stipple. Always flagged as a beginner design I don't think that it is actually that easy to do, so we are going to spent a whole session on just that.

The sample above incorporates the next point.

2. Ability to follow a drawn (or stencilled) line. Once freed from the feeder dogs and able to doodle or meander, it's time to get more serious and start trying to stitch out simple motifs. Again, not that easy...you need a good dose of concentration and steady hand movements and speed to follow a line. However if people want to make use of motifs they found on the internet or stencils they bought, an absolute essential skill to have. When doing my research I read somewhere on a blog that stitching out a pre-marked design was not really freemotion quilting...I was a bit stunned at that because I was wondering whether the author thought that I sit in front of my 40in fabric square and just stitch out my wholecloth designs just like that, all freehand out of my head. No marks, no guidelines, no nothing...had to smile at that. I am good but I am not that good! Definitely consider myself a freemotion quilter though.

3. Ability to backtrack. Nobody (maybe myself excluded) likes it, however the ability to go over an already stitched line is something that the beginner quilter will have to learn not only for stitching out non-continuous motifs/designs but also to travel from point A to B over an already stitched line unless they want to tie off every five minutes.

4. Echoing a shape. Echoing about 1/8in from an applique shape or around a motif, but also useful for varying or extending an already known design. In the beginning the beginner quilter is probably only able to stitch out 2-3 designs which is absolutely enough to start off with. In order to make this a bit more interesting, echoing can be used to vary a design or even extend it while practising to become more proficient at the design.

5. Internalising the quilting path. My personal favourite...in order to fill a space, any space, the quilter will need to know and be familiar with the direction of the design, including direction changes. This does not come naturally, it is something that has to be practiced. In order to do this the quilter will need to know beforehand where they are going to go and what they are going to do well before they come to the point of a direction change. Improvisation rarely works out at this early stage as the beginning quilter is still preoccupied with executing the shape they are trying to do plus their hand movement and speed. I think structure is the answer to this, similar to going somewhere in the car. You certainly would not just jump in the car hoping to get to where you need to go somehow...you usually have a very clear idea which roads you are going to take to get to your destination.

So I build the workshop around those five points, keeping the designs to a minimum (just meander, loops and swirls) hoping to enable quilters to go on their actual quilts to practice or get themselves one of those cute panels you can buy and just follow the lines.  I did include some basic grid work on the last day as some people might find that easier than filling an empty space. This should be very interesting to watch...I hope that me building everything around those five points will make sense to people and sink in and provide a rudimentary roadmap for beginners to continue their journey. But most importantly, I hope that it will encourage participants to tackle their quilts.

Karin

Exploring Affinity Designer 2

Today was 41 degrees over here and definitely a day to just stay inside and keep as cool as possible.

I sat down at the computer with the intention to do some work on various things, but then ended up playing with the Affinity Designer 2 program.

As I have got the program on both the Ipad as well as the desktop there was some confusion for me about the duplicate function as it is executed slightly differently on the desktop. Wanted to explore this a bit more and also make use of the power duplicate function (just press some buttons and it spits you out a motif) and the POint Transform tool that you can use to rotate your shapes around.

Basically played for the entire afternoon starting with some simple shapes

The power duplicate function is awesome...I basically just have to tell the program the rotation I want in degrees and how many times I want to go around. My Point is in the middle on this shape.

Next came the feathers

These are not my drawn feathers but a shape you can use in the program. Personally I would angle my feathers more (there probably is a way to do this, except I don't know it yet)...but I just wanted to see how this worked. So again I made the shape rotate around the middle, however then used the shape tool to erase the centre lines so that the middle was clean.

Next I re-visited a motif that I had previously drawn up painstakingly in the program trying to align each heart shape exactly next to each other. I managed but it was not a 100%. I was sure there was a way for the computer to work this out for me in terms of the hearts just touching...and it did!

The point in this example was still in the centre but outside the actual shape. Very neat! I then played around with the swirls which were added to the program a few updates ago

Very cool

Tried myself at e's and l's which was surprisingly challenging to get the shape right. The power duplicate is also used here except that you tell the program how many times you want to repeat the shape in the horizontal.

A bit of ribbon candy

A drawn motif rotating around the centre

I spare you the grids except for this one which I thought was really cool

So glad I did this...such a powerful program. But like with everything you do have to practice and become familiar with all these different functions and keep practising as it is very easy to forget how to use some of this. Like the pen tool...I think I will have to watch a tutorial again to get that straight in my head...find the pen really difficult to use. 

Hopefully the weather over here will cool down a bit as I got some quilting to do!

Karin

Binding Experiments

First of all, let me tell you that I am no longer getting email notifications for comments left. I looked for solutions but found that I am not alone, nevertheless there does not appear to be an answer. For now, I do check my comments and will reply to any queries on the blog itself. 

The last few weeks I have been preparing for an upcoming workshop on FMQ. As I could not visualise the size of the practice sandwiches I ended up stitching some things out myself. Good fun but then I also got into the binding, i.e. how to sew the binding on quickly and easily by machine.

Consulted the net and a binding booklet I had from Bethanne Nemesh.

First one

I used a 2in binding strip and sewed it to the back, then bringing it around to the front and stitching it on with a straight stitch. That looked incredibly easy to do but I struggled with that...in the end I glued my binding in place before stitching so that it would not move all over the place. That worked fine, but the glueing took a while!

Second sample

For this one I stitched my binding onto the front like I usually do. Again could not cope with pins or clips and ended up glueing it to the back. I found this incredibly laborious. This time I had used a 2-1/4in binding as suggested in BethanneNemesh' binding booklet. Initially I was going to stitch-in-the- ditch on the front through to the back but I did not like the lip that was left on the back, so I used a decorative stitch to secure the binding. That worked reasonably well, except for the time it took me to glue everything in place.

Third sample

That one was a bit of a disaster...stitched the binding onto the back, then brought it to the front and secured it with a decorative stitch again. Again used a 2-1/4in binding but did not glue it this time but basted it by hand in place. Also not very fast at all and the finish is somewhat hickledy-pickledy. Definitely not straight.

 

Fun little exercise, not sure I gained that much from it...I could have hand-sewed the binding on these three little pieces in no time at all. I think the method that could possibly work for me would be sample no. 2 where I sewed the binding to the front and then secured it with some sort of stitch. If I was to opt for a in-the-ditch stitch I would definitely make my binding 2in wide so the lip in the back would not be that large or I would opt again for a decorative stitch. Not sure though about the glueing everything into place...that took me a while even on such a small piece.

Karin

The Ugly Duckling Quilt is Finished

Happy New Year to everyone.

Christmas certainly was a busy time but I managed to finish a few things.

First at all, let me show you another bucket hat I made as a Christmas present

I took my time with this hat and hand-basted the seams before I actually took it to the machine. Worked a treat...no puckers, came out fantastic and was well received. Used some of the Bali fabric that I acquired on my trip last year.

I did some more work on my rather intensive background filler project but it was slow going. Partly because I need to preserve my shoulder but also because it just did not want to flow. Made some in-road though with stubborn day-today stitching and am hoping that it will be a bit easier from now on.

To give myself a little break I continued on the Ugly Duckling quilt, so named because I am not really a fan of soft pinks and the layout was just very simple to use up some scraps.

Bit hard to see because of the soft colours, here is another close up shot

I quilted this with a very soft apricot 50/2 Aurifil thread. First did the ruler work in the squares using Bethanne Nemesh Lilac Lines rulers that has an S-curve on the end. Lots of fun. After that I thought the sashing needed a bit more pizzaz so I put a chain of pearls in there. And then I stuffed up the border a bit...haha.  Had done the spine for the feathers before Christmas, ready to go, only to realise after that my spine was about 1/4in off center for the way I was going to quilt the feathers. I had cut my border 4-1/2in. Did not help that I changed my mind how I wanted to quilt the feathers, i.e. having them fill the entire space. Took me a few days to think this through and in the end I just cut off 1/4in off the border to have the feathers exactly in the middle. Anyway, was great to do some feathers again...I tried to do pretty informal feathers which I find incredibly hard to do. These are continuous type feathers which for a truly informal look would need to have a little bit more spacing in between. While that was the idea I only managed that in a couple of spaces. Its funny with the muscle memory...I have done continuous feathers for a long time and am really used to making them look like almost the bump back heirloom style feathers. To change that is obviously very difficult for me. But still looks pretty good...I threw in a few embellishments and did the heart shaped elongated plume in between just enough to make it a bit more interesting. Looks great. On a side note...I managed to hit 5 million stitches on my Q20 over Christmas which is about 1,250000 stitches per year. Not bad.

I chose a stripey binding and followed a little trick on how to match the stripes when joining your binding outlined in Bethanne Nemesh' Bitty Binding booklet. Worked fantastic and all my stripes matched, even when joining the binding in the end.

Really happy with this little quilt. Just had a look over my blog. This is the third quilt I managed to get out of a fat quarter bundle which is called Foxglove Gardens by Leanne Beasley for Ella Blue fabrics and part of a promise to myself for this year to use up my leftover fabrics and scraps. Apart from the backing I had all the materials at hand. Because of the colours I went on a hunt for a nice backing and fell in love with this fabric

The fabric is from the Fiore Collection produced by Maya Ootani for Handworks Fabric (printed in Japan). Not my usual colour but it matched just so perfectly and is really good quality.

So, with this done, I will need to make another list of tasks to work out what comes next. For the remainder of the week I am aiming to 

- continue on my background filler project, i.e. complete at least one more section of the quilt

- baste one of the charity quilts ready for quilting

- watch one of the Lisa Calle's Design Society videos to find out about the challenge for the new year.

- make a list of the order that I want projects to be completed as there is a lot going on in my head at the moment.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #107 over at Quilt Schmilt

 

Karin