Quilting Tutorials — Free Motion Quilting

While I do a lot of custom quilting, every once in a while a quilt just needs some good all over texture. This Diamond Ribbon Candy quilting motif is a great way to do that. It’s an easy motif that is perfect for beginners and can easily be done on a domestic or longarm.   Marking the Quilting Motif The first step in quilting this motif is to mark the diamond grid. If you have blocks that will work, it’s the easiest way to do it. The thing to keep in mind, is you want it wider than tall. For...

We are back for more quilting ideas! You may be wondering if I’m running out of different ways to quilt blocks, but I can assure you, that will never happen. You may have started to notice that for the most part, I use a core base of quilting ideas for most of my designs, but there are so many different ways to combine them and create an endless list of ideas. I’m hoping this is encouraging to you, especially if you are new to free motion quilting. You don’t have to master everything to be good at it, just master...

How to Quilt Orange Peel Blocks We are so excited to be able to share quilting ideas for each of the skill builder blocks all year long. One of the most common questions I get asked is “how should I quilt this?” My hope, is that by the end of the year, you’ll have a bunch of ideas and different ways to look at and approach an array of different quilts blocks that you can mix and match and use on different projects. This week, we are looking at orange peels. Whether appliqued or pieced, you can approach the quilting...

How to Quilt on a Domestic Machine – Moving Around the Quilt One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when quilting on your domestic machine, is to figure out how to get the quilt under the throat of your sewing machine. By the time you add the top, batting, and back, there can be quite a bit of bulk. Pair this with a small sewing machine throat and it can become very overwhelming very quickly. This week, I share how I break down the quilt to easily move around it while quilting and keeping the least amount of bulk under...

How to Quilt Half Square Triangles In our never-ending quest to answer the age old questions “how do I quilt it?” we are back with more ideas for block 4 from our free Online Quilting Bee. This month we focused on half square triangles. These nifty blocks can be put together in so many ways, which also leaves countless ways to quilt them. When deciding how to quilt the block, you can treat each triangle as it’s own element, or ignore the seam lines and focus on the shapes they create.   Quilting Plan 1 In this first idea, we...