Quilting Tutorials — Free Motion Quilting

How to Combine Quilting Designs With so many different quilting motifs available, it’s hard to decide which ones to use and how. With custom quilting, we now have to decide on multiple quilting designs to use on our quilt top. When using multiple designs, how do you decide which ones will work together and how to combine the different elements? This week we dive into techniques you can use to discover how those elements will interact with each other and different ways to combine them to create multiple outcomes.   When deciding how to combine different motifs, I start with...

How to Quilt Negative Space We LOVE modern quilts, but with modern quilts often comes lots of negative space. While this can create a very stunning design, it can also create a headache when trying to decide how to quilt it. It doesn’t have to be that way though! When I’m deciding what to quilt in the negative space of a design, I don’t approach it any differently than I do the rest of the quilt. It’s a large open area, but with a few simple methods, it’s easy to break it down and make the process go smoother and...

For the most part, I am a self taught quilter. I got very basic instructions 15 years ago and just went for it. I immediately fell in love with the process, but have learned much along the way. I now look back on some of my earlier quilts and am so delighted at how far I’ve come. I also chuckle and shake my head a little at how I once thought those earlier quilts were so good. They were alright and are perfectly usable and fantastic for cuddling, but there are things I have learned since then that have allowed...

One of my favorite parts of the quilting process is to sit down with a top after it’s all done and figure out my quilting plan. This is my opportunity to decide what I want to accent and make a focal point and how to best elevate the entire design. I’ve found that the basic principles I learned in my art classes many years ago are so important to quilts and a quilting plan as well. As you watch the video to see my process for creating a quilting plan for our Stacked pattern, I want you to pay attention...

Did you start FMQ on a regular machine? Is that the best way to try out FMQ? I did. I actually learned Free Motion Quilting right after I made my first quilt. The very first one I did, I hand quilted, but then knew I wouldn’t get far if I kept doing that (it was a baby quilt and took me 2 1/2 years to finish). My mom had recently taken some free motion quilting classes and showed me what she had learned, so I tried it and was hooked from the beginning. I have quilted every quilt I’ve made....