3 Essential Free Motion Quilting Designs on a Sewing Machine: Best Tips for Beginners in 2021

today i'm going to teach you my three foundational free motion quilting designs these three designs are going to teach you how to fill a space evenly how to adjust a design to fit a space and how to start the process of learning how to backtrack along previously quilted lines i promise though it's a very low stress design and it's going to turn out great no matter what so we have our machine all set up for free motion quilting and we have our quilt sandwich ready we have one more thing to do before we can let go and free motion quilt and that is to do a tension test so i do this every time i sit down at my machine every time i change a bobbin or re-thread my machine or change needle anytime i have changed my settings in any way i do this simple little test and then i know that i'm not going to be caught with surprise threadness on the back of my quilt or piecing so here's what i do i have my machine all set up and this is what this extra batting is really handy for because not only does it give us something to grip it also gives us a place to test our tension on something that is as close to a cold sandwich as we can get we're not going to draw on the top but on my long arm i actually put a little scrap of fabric here and do um the tension through all three layers but here i just do it through the quilt batting and the backing i'm going to drop my needle and just pull up my bottom thread because i don't want my bottom thread to get tangled in the stitches and kind of look like there's a tension problem when it's actually just that end thread so once i have both pulled up i'm going to just kind of gently hold them down and drop my presser foot so that i am ready to begin stitching now i'm going to make some little doodles that are kind of generally in the shape of the quilting designs that i'm going to do on the cool top so if there are a lot of angles on my quilt top that i plan on quilting then i want to do some sharp stops and start on my tension test because those little edges might show a little bit of a different tension if i'm going to be doing pebbles then i'm going to do my tension test on pebbles i want as close to the design as i can get so that i have the best tension information that i can get so i'm just going to hold on to these thread tails [Music] and now i can take a look at the underside now my tension looks pretty good i don't think i have any adjustments to make so i think i'm ready to begin stitching now if you do spot a problem with your tension when you kind of look at the underside if there are big loops on the back of your quilt or if your bobbin thread is being pulled up to the top and there are loops on the top then this is the time to fix it and it's all going to be in your attention settings ideally you want the top threads to stay on the top and the bobbin threads to be visible only on the back if one is being pulled through your quilt sandwich to the other side then you have a tension problem so now that you've stitched out your tension test let's look at some of the problems that you may be seeing i have this little sample here that shows three different tension settings on my machine the top line shows where my top tension was too low the center is where my tension is pretty good and the bottom one is where my top tension is too tight it is too high now all of these have the same bobbin tension on your regular sewing machine you're not going to be adjusting the bobbin tension that much there are some options to do that if adjusting your top tension just isn't working for you but for 95 of the problems i would say that adjusting your top tension is where you want to start these top two lines here don't seem to look that bad right um they both have kind of identifiable stitches there's no kind of bobbin thread kind of poking out from the back they don't look too bad but when we flip this over you can see that there is eyelashing on the back and that is what these little lines are called they look like eyelashes and they are most prominent when you're going around a curve or when you're kind of at the points of a sharp design so you can see them their worst right here kind of at these places where i change direction so if you see this on the back of your quilt that means that your top tension is too low and you need to tighten it a comfortable number for my machine is around two and a half so that's where i like to keep it for piecing for quilting my machine works really well right there yours may be a different number or if you have a different machine it may be a different setting altogether but adjust that and tighten it down and see if your eyelashes disappear another thing that may give away a loose top tension is if you have this the stitches look pretty good but if i were to pull on one of them i can pull loops out so if you see a tension problem like this and you think i can live with eyelashes on the back maybe it's not so bad i want to encourage you to fix your problem because as your quilt is kind of washed and used these big loops and your thread on top and i know i'm breaking a couple but these loops will grow and catch on things and just cause some problems so be sure to check your attention and correct this problem before you start stitching on your fancy quilt now this middle row here shows a pretty good tension my stitches are kind of identifiable on the front and they look about the same on the back so for me that tension setting is two and a half but for your machine it might be different but this is kind of what you're going for you want to be able to have identifiable separate stitches that you can't see the bobbin thread on the top or the top thread on the bob on the bottom of your quilt this last line of stitching shows where my tap tension was far too tight and from the back it doesn't look so bad my stitches are nice and identifiable but from the top it really looks like there's just a piece of thread kind of lying on top of the surface of my quilt sandwich it's not being pulled down into the body of my quilt sandwich to create separate stitches it just looks like there's a line of thread kind of lying on the top and if you look closely you can see some of my bobbin thread being pulled to the surface of the quilt especially at these peaks where i'm changing direction on the zigzag so to fix that you are going to lessen your top tension you would turn your dial so that the number is lower or whatever your manual says and that will lessen the tension on the top thread so that the bobbin thread has the ability to pull that top thread down into the sandwich and make your stitches nice and separate if you are getting really large snarls of thread on the back of your quilt or on the top of your quilt then the problem may lie in not bringing that bobbin thread up to the top of the surface of your quilt before you start quilting or you might just need to re-thread your machine that is always kind of my first piece of advice if you're having really troublesome machine problems is just to rethread your entire machine clean it check for any lint and just start over and then start tinkering with your attention if it's if it's a really bad snarl like that it's finally time to start quilting but where do you start and how do you move around a quilt there are two main strategies for quilting a cool top and part of it depends on what kind of design you're doing and part of it just depends on your personal preference you can either start in the middle of your quilt and kind of work outward either in wedges or in kind of a concentric circle all the way out to the edges that has its advantages because working in the center of the quilt is the hardest part because you're dealing with all the bulk on the quilt um kind of stuffed half stuffed inside your machine half out on the table and it's it's just the hardest part to quilt so getting it over with first has some real advantages the other strategy is to tackle your quilt kind of in rows and even if you're not using blocks or anything as a reference using just a comfortable kind of quilting area as a guide so i would work across this top starting in the top left or the top right and do my all over kind of a comfortable distance down and across when i got to the other edge i could either work backwards or i can start back on that same side and work across again your all-overs will bleed into each other and no one will ever notice that you did it in rows but if that's your personal preference and it makes more sense to you to kind of clump it into rows rather than starting the center and working out it's a little bit easier to see where you're going and kind of what you've accomplished going in rows so it's personal preference some designs will work a little bit better in this way if you're doing something that has a lot of back and forth lines or you're kind of working a pattern that has like a side to side element then rows might have a real advantage for your design but if you're just doing it all over then it's purely personal preference try it both ways and see which one you like best if you choose to start in the center of your work then there's one thing you're going to have to tackle right away and that is what to do with these thread ends as always there are multiple ways to deal with this but let's go ahead and bring up our thread the first option is to simply hold on to these thread ends and start stitching and as long as you provide a little bit of tension to these then you can simply move away and then you will need to come back with a needle and thread and bury them into the batting of your quilt it does make for a little bit of extra finishing work when you feel like you're already done with the quilt you can bury them as you go but i can never stay on top of that the other method that you can use is to take just a few very small stitches right where your thread came up just little tiny micro stitches i'm basically right back where i was when i brought my bottom thread up now i can start stitching away from this point and when i get a little bit of distance i can come in and just clip them flush with the surface of my quilt those micro stitches will act as kind of like a little locking stitch and this is how i start my threads and all my quilts even my show quilts and i've never had it come undone or had any problems with it if at all possible i like to start my thread ends off the side of the quilt but if you break a thread or want to start in the center then you're going to have to choose one method to use so this is my preferred method but if you would prefer to bury your ends and have it look super clean then that is totally up to you i did work up a little sample here for you guys of the different methods for burying your ends this top line i actually did thread a needle and bury my ends you can see i left it kind of exposed here but i would clip that just at the surface of the quilt and it would just kind of get sucked back into the batting and uh disappear this middle one i did the micro stitches and clipped them at the surface and you can see there is a little bit of thread build up at the start and stop of my line of stitching i would try to hide that in a seam or be a little more careful i would also probably be using matching thread instead of white thread on dark green fabric this last line i did my auto cutter on my machine which it's an option there are some drawbacks the first is that it leaves this really short tail on top when you begin a line of stitching and it's going to be trouble to thread a needle and bury that you could also just take a few stitches and then clip this at the surface kind of combine the micro stitches and the auto cutter i think the real trouble with this method is that when you use the auto cutter you are left with two tiny tails on the back of your stitching when you clip them and i don't know maybe you're fine with that you could do the micro stitches and use the auto cutter and then when you're done come back and clip all those tiny tails or leave them your preference all up to you the only time i use my auto cutter when i'm free mushroom quilting is when i am making a sample or like a pillow front and i don't care what the back side of my work is going to look like because it's going to be inside of a pillow then i will totally use my auto cutter and just leave those little tails kind of hidden back behind there but i will start with the micro stitches in the longer tail and then clip them but again do whatever makes you happy in your quilting so the first design i want to go over with you guys is a meander or a stipple and i know this design shows up in a lot of beginner books and that is for a very good reason it is easy and it teaches i think the most valuable skill that you need to learn when you are free motion quilting and that is how to fill a space with a fairly even spacing of stitching and that skill will follow you throughout any all-over design that you will learn um in this video in the future videos or in any book it is navigating around a space and filling it consistently so let's begin with the basics of stipple you can start this design by starting in the center of your quilt and working out i'm going to start in kind of this upper right corner which is kind of just where i start my all-over designs that's my personal preference you can start in the center if you would prefer i started off the surface of my top so i didn't have to worry about that kind of beginning of stitching snarl that sometimes happens and i also don't have to worry about burying those ends because i'll be cutting the excess batting and backing off when i trim my quilt top now that i am on to the surface of my top it is time to stitch and the essence of a stipple or meander is just a consistently wavy line or a wiggly line more than wavy we are going to make little half circle moon shapes that are all joined together so i'm going to stitch a half circle in one direction and then kind of turn around and go in the other direction so here's my little half circle here and i'm going to turn and go back the other way and that's it creating that wiggly line around the surface of your quilt is all that this is about now i tend to work this design kind of back and forth in rows because i want to stay organized i want to make sure that i'm working out from my starting point whether that's in the center of my quilt or in the corner or a side but i want to make sure that i'm working in a way where i'm not going to work back upon myself and leave like an unquilted pocket of area that is difficult to kind of get in and quilt and get back out now let's take a look at my progress you can see i have a fairly even kind of quilting thing here going this is where i stopped and rearranged my hands without stopping my needle you should always move your hands when your needle is stopped and down so that you don't get this weird kind of pointy thing like i have here this pattern is all about kind of simple repeated shapes there are the half moons that wiggle back and forth there's also this shape that i find i use a lot and it's kind of like this wiggly little dolphin tail and i use this kind of as a filler to get back into this space wiggle in wiggle and then wiggle back out and you can see i repeat that shape a lot there's another little one right here there's one right here one right here that's kind of one of my go-to shapes to make my stipple look less like a straight wiggly line you can see right here i kind of got on a path where i was just wiggling back and forth in a straight line now i'm not going to rip that i'm just going to continue quilting around it and by the time i fill in all the space it will completely disappear so some problems that might crop up as you are stitching this design if you find yourself quilting back into an area that is unquilted and you don't have a way to get back out so let me stitch that up so i stitched my line and then i got to about here and i realized i had this area that was a little unquilted so i turned around and i started heading in there and then i got here so i'm kind of stuck here there's not a great path out that will maintain my kind of even spacing of my design so there are a couple of options i can just stop quilting like i did right here and bury my end and start up again somewhere else and once this is all quilted no one will ever notice that little stop i could also just do a quick turnaround and this area here will have three lines of stitching that are much closer together than other areas of my quilt it might be a little noticeable but it will save you bearing and end and honestly it's not going to be that noticeable once this is all filled in if someone points out this little area to you that has three lines of stitching then i don't know if they're a really great friend the final option is to cross over your line i could do a turn around right here and just head over here and cross my line of stitching and it's the same thing as the turn around here where my lines will be a little closer together than in other places it might be a little noticeable but once it's done it's still going to be a quilt right even if there's a few little mistakes here and there don't focus on the mistakes focus on the process focus on improving your skills focus on having a fun relaxing time and finishing a quilt so here is my finished sample of meander and you can see that my area is filled fairly evenly i would call this spacing about a half an inch because in any direction there's about a half an inch of spacing between my lines of stitching and that's the goal that we're trying to achieve here even thread lines across the surface of the quilt so that you have a nice kind of consistent texture now i have done half inch spacing kind of on this three quarters of the area and then i did probably about a quarter of an inch of spacing up in this corner and you can see how those different densities give a really different feel to these areas of this quilt this feels a lot more kind of cuddly and comfy and casual whereas this feels a little bit more um formal or fancy or dense it feels like and it is a little bit stiffer than this over here when you wash this quilt they are both going to crinkle and these lines are going to give a little bit of definition to that crinkle now there are many ways to make your stipple or meander much fancier but for right now i want you to focus on the skill of filling a space evenly and when you doodle this design and i encourage you to doodle try some experiments draw an awkwardly shaped box and then meander inside of it draw a box and start at one corner and try to end your meander in another corner or start your meander in one corner and try to work all the way around and fill the box and end up where you started those types of problem solving on the fly uh skills are what you're going to need to fill your space evenly without kind of creating gaps or having to double back on yourself so that is stippling and i want you to take a little bit of time with this design with stitching it as well as doodling it because this is probably the most important skill that you're going to take forward to allow you to tackle any quilt and almost any quilting design that you come across in the future the second skill i want to work on with you guys is learning how to stretch and mold a shape so this design is really easy if you can write your name in cursive then you can totally quilt this and it's also a really flexible design so i think you guys are really gonna like it we are basically going to make cursive l shapes lowercase l shapes so it's just loops loops on a line i have prepared my little sample square just with some lines that i drew with a hair marker just so i could see them and use them as a baseline so i'm going to start here at the top and just make some simple letter l's [Laughter] that's it that's all there is to this design so this design seems really simple but it's actually very flexible and the skill that it teaches you is to make a consistent shape and a shape that is the same size and a shape that you can kind of expand and shrink to fit into your space so this bar up here is relatively small but i'm going to move down here to this next space which i marked at a kind of larger interval it's about three inches where the last one was two so you can see that these are the same shape but this one is much taller and kind of more exaggerated but the key is that i'm making them a consistent size to each other and that is the skill that this shape will really teach you how to expand a design so it's a little taller but still give you that consistency this is one of my favorite quilting designs and i think it's really underrated even alone just simple lines of l shapes of loops can be a really effective lovely overall texture now you can mark the lines like i did with a hair marker or some other type of marking utensil or you can let the piecing in your quilt be the guide this could be across a common seam line across blocks they could be different heights you could have one in the sashing and then several in the box and then line up the next one and the next sashing however you want to allot your space to make it easy for yourself if you can use seam lines then definitely use them i can't wait to show you the expanded versions of this in the next video the final design that we're going to learn in this video is messy pebbles and pebbles are traditionally left toward a more advanced class because they require backtracking or quilting over your same lines and that is the skill that i want you to learn here but but i'm gonna make it really easy because this is a low stress pebble so we are gonna make messy pebbles we're going to intentionally go around our pebble a couple times not on the same line so that it gives a really kind of textural almost like um those little popping bubbles that you get in packaging it's going to get that kind of texture to it but it's going to teach you the motion of pebbles and the kind of idea of tracing back over a line but not requiring it i'm going to start by quilting a circle and i'm not going to worry that it's perfect or not so now i have a circle and it's not perfect it's a little lumpy on one side i'm gonna go around that circle a few more times and even it out there's no rule about how many times i'm gonna quilt around it but maybe three to five is a good kind of rule of thumb [Music] so i've gone around this a few times now and it looks a lot rounder than it did when i first started so i'm ready to move on to the next pebble and to do that i'm going to switch directions that i was quilting i was just quilting this previous pebble counterclockwise so i'm going to reverse and go clockwise for the next pebble so i quilted my second circle and it's not perfect either and i met back up to where i joined it so now i'm going to trace around it a few times all done so now i'm just gonna keep adding pebbles i'm gonna switch direction every pebble counterclockwise or clockwise and that will help you get nice round pebbles that will be especially important when you do go down to single lined pebbles instead of these messy pebbles but as you're quilting try to occasionally aim for a line and see if you can hit it and trace along it for a few stitches or even half a circuit of your circle and that will teach you that tracing ability and hitting that line that you are aiming for but you don't have to do it every time in fact you don't want to do it every time on this design this is a low stress way to practice that skill but still end up with a finished quilt at the end i'm going to keep going for just a minute and then i'll show you the finished sample i'm really loving this white thread on this black fabric i don't think i've ever quilted this combination before with the messy pebbles but i'm pretty sweating here's my sample all done and it definitely has this amazing texture of those little pop bubbles i have to admit if i had to pick one design this would probably be my favorite it is just so unbelievably great to touch now i have quilted my pebbles and kind of a variation of sizes i have some really small ones and some much larger ones you can aim to have yours kind of more consistently sized or you can be a little bit more extreme than i've even been here but remember the skill you're learning is occasionally aiming for one of those lines you previously quilted and trying to trace it for a little while to see how close you can get but again there's no pressure this is a functional skill building exercise even if you never hit one of the lines you're aiming for you're still going to end up with a great looking quilt so now that we've learned a few basic designs and the skills that go along with them i want to just go over a few of my general tips for free motion quilting and the first is to start on a practice quilt sandwich i have been working on these little layer cake scraps that i have laying around i encourage you to take that fabric that maybe you're not in love with anymore or those fat quarters that you got in a swamp something that you aren't emotionally invested in and make a couple of practice quilt sandwiches and just start stitching these skills you can doodle and draw and i encourage you to do those but there's nothing quite like sitting down at the machine and actually stitching so make those practice quilt sandwiches and gain some confidence before you start right in on a quilt my second tip is to go slow i have been quilting on my regular sewing machine as well as my long arm for quite some time so i am familiar with these motions more so than someone who is just sitting down for the very first time to free motion quilt and that is true of anyone you see on youtube or instagram teaching you these motions and teaching you these designs they've practiced and at some point they were a beginner too when i was a beginner i went so slow and i'm happy with that it taught me the skill but this is not a race so take your time no one is going to be criticizing how long it took you to finish a quilt because you don't even need to tell them a kind of corollary to the go slow is to watch your stitch length a lot of people will get their hands and feet out of sync when they are starting to free motion quilt it is just like driving you are turning that steering wheel and stepping on the gas to work together to help you get around curves and that's going to be the same thing when you are stitching so when you are watching your progress take a look at how long your stitches are relative to each other you want them to be a fairly consistent size if your stitches start growing and getting bigger and bigger it means that your hands are moving faster than your feet and if your stitches are super duper mega tiny that you can't even see them that means that your foot is going faster than your hands you can fix it by adjusting either side of that equation you can slow or speed up your hands or you can slow or speed up your machine but you want them to be in sync you want your stitches to all be about the same size we did discuss some tension problems and how to fix them but one of the best tips for managing your tension is to match your top and bobbin thread to each other and that means that if your bobbin thread is pulled up to the top a little bit or your top thread is pulled to the bottom if they match then it will be much less noticeable than if you had red thread in your top and yellow thread in your bobbin because when they're pulled against each other they're just going to be a lot more noticeable than if they match each other i know i've already mentioned doodling a number of times but i think it really is the best kind of skill building activity that you can do this meander looks super easy but i guarantee you my first attempts at meander were nothing like this they were jerky i didn't know where i was going and just kind of getting from point a at one side of a block to point b at another side of the block seemed like a maze but drawing and doodling helped me build that skill so if you're sitting down to stitch and having those problems where you don't know where to go then pause and doodle for a while and it will kind of build that muscle mental memory so that you don't have to learn where to go and how to stitch and how to manage your quilt all at once you can focus on one thing at a time let's talk about managing quilt bulk i'm working on these little samples so it's very easy for me to slide it around and i don't have a lot of extra fabric kind of sitting all around my machine but it is totally possible to quilt a rather large quilt on a small machine and i have done it many times there are some tools that you can buy that will help you manage the bulk there are little clips that you can roll the edges up and kind of clip them i personally usually went with like the scrunch method where i just kind of jammed it in anywhere i could on the table on the machine in my lap because the only part of your quilt that needs to be flat is the part between your hands right under the needle and as long as that is flat the rest can be all crumpled up and it's fine because you're going to quilt in that little area between your hands and then you're going to move your hands flat in another area and continue quilting there another benefit to doodling is that you will have that doodle as a reference while you are quilting so for example i always keep a post-it note of my design with any notes or a drawing especially if i'm doing something like pebbles where i want them to stay a fairly consistent size i draw those pebble sizes on a post-it note and i stick it to my machine so that i have that as a reference if you have a doodle then you can put that right by your machine and then if you do kind of forget the motion or forget the design you have a quick reference right there to refer to i also want to talk about kind of creating a comfortable ergonomic space for you to quilt in make sure that you adjust the height of your chair and your machine kind of relative to each other so that you are not quilting where you are reaching up to move the quilt the whole time or that your machine is so low that you're like hunched over to see the needle all the time you want to be sitting up straight and comfortable and have your table at a height where you aren't uh straining yourself the whole time because this isn't going to take a while so you want to make sure that you are comfortable while you're stitching and that you are also taking breaks to kind of stretch and move around this is a surprisingly physical thing to do and so you need to pause a little bit and take care of your body make sure that you don't feel every muscle use quilting the next day so take care of yourself during this process the final thing i want to say about free motion quilting is unless your mistakes are structural like really bad tension or you have folds in your fabric or broken threads or something like that then don't rip out your work don't rip out your work for a design flaw or a stitching mistake in your design you are going to learn how to free motion quilt really well by quilting by doing it not by ripping out stitches and redoing the same area of your quilt multiple times at the end of the day the goal is to have a finished quilt and you are never going to get finished if you keep ripping out your quilting and restarting so just go with it and in a couple of years or in a decade you're gonna look back at that early work and find it really charming i promise i look back at the very first things that i did and i'm like oh early quilter me i'm so proud of her the final thing i want to share with you guys is this quilt and i want to share it because i get a lot of comments about how long arm quilting is so different than domestic quilting and why can't you show all of your long arming on your domestic machine but i'm here to tell you that they are ultimately the same anything you see me do on my long arm you can do on a domestic machine it might have to be adjusted slightly for scale just because it's hard to do really large designs on a domestic machine a regular sewing machine but it is absolutely possible and this quilt is really special to me because i was making this quilt and free motion quilting it on my regular sewing machine when i got my long arm and i knew my long arm was coming and i was about halfway done with this and i just fizzled out i'm like i'm so ready for my long arm and i didn't want to struggle with this fairly large quilt through my regular machine anymore and so i clammed it to my long arm and finished it in my long arm so this quilt is half quilted on a regular machine and half quilted on a long arm and there's a little bit of everything in this quilt there is some free motion quilting there is some ruler work there is stitch in the ditch but looking at it now i can't tell which parts i did on the long arm and which parts i did on my regular sewing machine because functionally they're the same thing they are a needle going up and down through a quilt sandwich and it really ultimately doesn't matter if you are moving the cool sandwich or if you are moving the machine you can do the same things in both circumstances and i 100 believe in you that you can do this so don't be afraid to tackle something on your regular sewing machine that you see someone doing on a long arm because it's totally possible it might need a little bit of adjustment like i said but you can get that same look that same feel on a regular machine so that wraps up the most important kind of beginning stitching elements of free motion quilting if you needed help setting up your machine or getting your quilt sandwich basted then you'll want to refer back to the first video i did in this series and i will put the link right here in the corner one of these corners and you can watch that and it will show you how to baste your quilt how to set up your machine what needles you need all that kind of stuff if you are ready for the next video in this series it will be coming next and i'm going to cover beginner ruler work some feathers how to build upon the designs that we learned today how to mix them together how to change them up how to have fun with them and some tips for learning uh more designs kind of based on the skills that we learned today so that'll be coming soon and then after that it'll be back to my regular cold tutorials and i have a really good one coming up for you guys so i'm excited about it if you are ready to jump in with more free motion quilting designs then i will put that playlist popping up on the screen somewhere right now and you can have a little peek at some more advanced things and expand your free motion quilting repertoire so i will see you guys again very soon happy quilting take some time with this

Channel: Tiny Orchard Quilts

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Rating: 4.920094 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, quilt, tiny orchard quilts, quilting tutorial, free motion quilting on home machine, free motion quilting for beginners, free motion quilting designs, free-motion quilting, free motion quilting tutorials for beginners, beginner free motion quilting, machine quilting for beginners, machine quilting on home machine, free motion quilting on home machine for beginners, easy free motion quilting for beginners, machine quilting, free motion quilting, quilting for beginners

Id: oYWvY4QaoYQ

Length: 42min 47sec (2567 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021