- Are you a beginner quilter about to finish your first quilt, or perhaps you just need to
finish one really quickly? Today, I have 10 Fast
and Easy Quilting Designs to get you to the finish line. So stick with me and I'll
show you how to do it. (pleasant music) Hi, I'm Karen Brown of
Just Get It Done Quilts. I give you tips, tricks and strategies to help you make the quilt
that you want to make. And if you like what you see, please hit that subscribe button. (plop) Once you finish making your quilt top, it's now time for a totally
different kind of sewing, taking your back, a batting and a flimsy, and putting it all together. I've already made a video on
how to make a quilt sandwich and I'll link that
video down in the notes. But now it's time to move
on to the actual quilting. It's always best to do a test piece first. That way, you can sort
out any tension issues. You want to use a quilting
needle or a top stitch needle, and often I will go up a size to a 90, especially if I'm using
a 40 weight thread. I use quilting gloves. This pair is sold as
actual quilting gloves. They are lightweight with tacky fingers, but these ones I purchased
from the dollar store in my first Dollar
Store Sewing Hacks video and in most places works just as well. The first 5 patterns
all use a walking foot. A walking foot allows all three layers of your quilt sandwich to feed evenly through your sewing machine. It's an added expense and it's
a little fiddly to attach, at least on my machine it is, but the results are definitely worth it. I start one to two
inches from my quilt top. So if I get a thread nest, it's on a part that I'm going to trim off. The first pattern is a long wave, and it starts with just
one long wavy line. You can mark it off ahead of time, or you can make it up as you go along. Then just repeat the wave on
either side of the first line. At the start of the wave I
like the distance between lines to be about 1 to 2 inches. What's really nice about this design is you don't need to worry
about getting the wave exactly the same every time. Any variations just add to the texture. And this is the design that I used on my first stash buster quilt. Out of all 10 designs, wonky
lines are probably the easiest to do, and you don't
even need to practise. Just try to sew a straight
line and you'll find that it swerves to the left
and swerves to the right. I like to sew my first line down through the middle of my quilt, and I make another roughly
parallel line to that down the right side, and then I repeat it till I get to the edge. Then I turn the quilt
around and do it all again. I like to sew my lines
1 to 2 inches apart, and it's perfectly okay if
the swerves don't line up. And this is the pattern that I used in my Stashbuster 2 quilt because this one just zips along. I'm sure many of you
made the beginner mistake of thinking that sewing a
straight line in the ditch was the simplest, easiest way to go. Just follow the seam lines.
Like how hard can it be? The challenge is that our
seam lines are not often as straight as they could be, and where seams intersect,
it can get very bulky. It is much easier to just
move your presser foot about a quarter to a half an
inch or even a little bit more to the side of the seam,
and either use the edge of your presser foot or
the walking foot guide to keep you straight. Normally, I let the block pattern tell me how far apart to space my lines, but they don't need to be
equally spaced to look good. I have also find sewing
diagonal straight lines pretty easy and forgiving. Just use a masking tape
to mark the diagonal between the two corners. I showed this technique in my 5 Sewing Hacks
with Masking Tape video, and I'll link that in the notes. You can take the wonky or the
straight line quilting pattern and make another set of
lines perpendicular to them. How evenly you space the
lines is totally up to you. You can make areas of dense quilting by adding a few extra lines
of quilting in both directions and on the diagonal. Take either a wonky
line or a straight line and quilt them in a random
pattern from one side to another. I do suggest that you make
a rough map ahead of time so that you get the pattern
result that you want and ensure that you don't leave
any large unquilted areas. You can also do lines
that pivot or meander. The choice is yours. And with all these walking foot designs, you might also play with
the decorative stitches on your machine. The second group are free motion designs. This means our feed dogs are down and we're using our darning foot. We place our hands like so. How far apart you put them is a little bit of experimentation between
the size of your hands and the size of your quilting platform. Too close together and you'll need to move your hands more
often or find yourself getting sloppy with your technique. Too far apart and you'll
lose control of your quilt and end up using too much body strength. So there's a learning curve
as you find your groove, and you put your pedal to the max. If you can lower your machine speed, that will help in the beginning. But no matter if you're a beginner or an experienced quilter, it's always good to start
with a practise piece. And in this method, we want
to pull up our bobbin thread before we start. These five designs all use a
loopy wax on wax off method. First we make a loop then
we wax on to the right, make another loop and then
we wax off to the left and make another loop. I like to alternate looping
right with looping left, but if you like to do two
or more of the same at once, that's okay too. And you'll soon realise that
filling the space evenly is much more important than
making perfectly round loops. This is similar to small loops, but we have more space between the loops, sort of a branch with
little berries on it. This design is less dense
than the small loops. I also like to use this design
when I am quilting sashing because it's good in small places. This is exactly the same
motion as the small loops, but we are upsizing the loops. Larger loops mean a less dense pattern. Less dense means less quilting, and less quilting means
you're done faster. The last shape is an elongated loop. It's the same wax on wax
off motion as before, but it's exaggerated in one direction. This method is great to do
in strips or in triangles, but when I'm using this
in free motion quilting, I usually design a pattern
of these elongated loops that I can repeat over a larger area. This method combines small
loops, branching loops, elongated loops and
large loops altogether. They can be totally
random or vary by block. You can even do small loops
inside of larger loops. This method is great for
wandering brains like mine who like to change it up as they go along. So just a few more things. Pacing is very important when you're working on
your sewing machine. Take pauses and adjust your posture often. Take breaks, get up and stretch. And you can use multiple
techniques in one quilt. This quilt, I've used
straight lines in the borders, I've used large loops in the middle and then I've used branching
loops in a focus block. Experiment with thread
weights and colours. You can have a lot of
fun mixing these all up. And finally, don't worry about mistakes. You're in the homestretch now, and you'll be amazed
at how much is forgiven once you get the binding on. This video is just one in a series on sewing machine quilting, all linked to the playlist
in the notes below. There is more to come in this series, but if there's anything in particular you want to know more
about, please put that down in the comment section below. Coming on Monday, November 30th, I'll have Pearl-Ann Gooding
on Karen's Quilt Circle. We will be talking about the intersection of storytelling, quilting,
and how she juggles both. If you liked this video,
please give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe
and hit that bell beside the subscribe button so that YouTube will notify
you when I make a new video. You can also find me on
Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest and Just Get It Done Quilts. And you can subscribe to my newsletter at JustGetItDoneQuilts.com. So take care and I'll
see ya next time (plop).
