Beginner Free Motion Quilting Stippling - Quilting Basics Tutorial #7 with Leah Day

hello my quilting friends welcome to this quilting basics video all about free motion quilting my name is Leah day and this is one of my biggest passions I absolutely love free motion quilting but I know that it can be a real struggle to get into and learn from the ground up so we're going to jump in step by step together let's first learn how to move our quote how free motion quilting works with a very simple design called stippling to get started free motion quilting I'm going to drop my needle down and then bring it up to the point where the needle is starting to drop back down again and I give that top threaded tug and that pulls up a loop that is my bobbin thread and do that every time I start quilting whether it's free motion quilting or walking foot style quilting so now I want to stitch these straight lines I'm going to create like a little outline and then quilt some designs inside and this is a good opportunity for you to start experimenting and getting the feel for free motion quilting and understanding how this works basically the machine is not doing any of the work for you instead your hands are pushing the fabric forward they are responsible for the movement so if I don't move my hands if I take my hands off the quilt then the quilt is not going to go anywhere and for this reason anytime that you aren't moving your hands you want to stop the needle going up and down just take your foot off the foot pedal take your foot off the gas because any time that you're stitching and not moving you're forming a knot on the back of your quilt or the front so always watch out for that can be quite noticeable and it's one of those things that as you get started it can be really easy to just kind of pause and you might be thinking about where you're going next and you're not even realizing that your machine is continuing to run your continuing stitch so always connect pressing down on the gas with moving your hands and notice how smooth and steady I'm moving this it is not a race and it definitely is one of those things that going slower with your hands can definitely help now let's talk about stitch length because obviously the machine is not controlling this our hands are controlling this so whenever I want big stitches I move my hands fast you notice that I'm running my machine at roughly the same speed so here are my stitches and see how they're noticeably bigger than before it's because my hands are moving very fast but my machine was running relatively slow so that's how I produce big stitches now if I want to produce small stitches I'm going to move my hands very very slowly hardly at all and continue to run my machine at the same speed so here my stitches got so so super tiny if I had to rip these out that would be a real pain because they would take forever and they're so so small I can barely see them so part of the process of learning free motion quilting is learning how to balance the speed and movement and learning how to produce kind of medium sizes stitches and really there is no set stitch length here there's kind of just you know it's one of those visual things you kind of have to just look at it and go is that pretty to me or do I think those stitches are a little bit big or do I think that they're a little too small there's no right or wrong way to do this in short there's no right or wrong stitch length and I've never taken a ruler to my stitches to check them the one thing to keep in mind is that because this is something that is hand guided your stitches are going to fluctuate so you might have you know like let's say you're just getting started and your hands kind of push hard in that very first stitch and then you get and get back on track you're going to have a big stitch there and that's okay that happens you're going to have fluctuations sometimes in your stitches where they go from small to big some days you're going to have days where your stitches tend to be big and some days your stitches tend to be small it's really funny that way but free motion quilting is one of those techniques where the machine is not doing the work for you you're doing all the work and I hope that this is maybe a little comforting and that don't expect your stitches to all be the same size and length when you first get started so a little bit about settings this is something that can be very confusing for a lot of people when I set up my machine for free motion quilting I put a turning foot on my machine a darning foot is designed to hover over the surface of the quilt this one hops ever so slightly you can see it has a little bit of movement to it in the mechanics of the machine some feet just hover and some feet hop a lot so to kind of look at your machine and see what darning foot that you have and when it comes to stitch link I set my stitch length all the way down to zero and what this means is that the feed dogs a little teeth on the machine that are down here that help feed fabric forward those little teeth are not moving very much at all so by setting my stitch length to zero I don't have to drop the feed dogs but if you like to and dropping the feed dogs is something that you're used to then going ahead and do that it's good to understand that there are multiple ways to stitch in free motion and you don't have to do it in any set way I find it setting my stitch length to zero and not dropping the feed dogs produces a nicer looking stitch so now let's talk about actually free machine quilting some designs this is a design called stippling it's very very popular for free motion films and as you can see it's just basically a wiggly line that Wiggles around and doesn't cross itself so those were kind of what I call the rules of the design it's a very flowy wiggly design and notice how as I'm quilting I'm forming these shapes and I'm sometimes I'm slowing down and speeding up as I form that like I know that that shape feels very natural to me so oftentimes put my foot down and speed up and then slow down whenever I'm forming a shape that I might not be able to see as well so this is a design that has a very simple rule but sometimes it can be a little struggle to get used to it so here's a good place to get started the simplest form of stippling is just to take make you shapes so just think of like the letter U or the letter n in cursive and just go up and down back and forth just like that now I'll kind of get you into the flow of stippling just making that simple curving line so do that for a few rows just to get the hang of it and then as you you know cut up pay attention to your boredom you know as you get bored with this then go okay well how can I change it maybe a little bit maybe add a bin to it so curl one up a little higher and bend it around and then stitch a smaller u-shape and then curl the next one up and around so you can see by doing that we just made it a little bit more interesting a little bit more freeform when you're free motion quilting especially for the first time this might feel like a struggle because you're doing so many things at once you are moving the fabric and you're completely in control and moving the fabric you are also pressing your foot pedal down and trying to keep the speed of the machine in time with the movement of your hands and you're trying to think of the design all at the same time and that's a lot of things to do so one tip that I always get beginners is to mark the design so in all my patterns I've included practice worksheets plus actual quilting diagrams for you to mark your blocks for you to mark your quilting design on the fabric so that way you can be quilting instead of having to focus on so many things at once you can be quilting along a marked line and not have to think about it so here I've just drawn on some stippling I'll show you the difference when you have a mark line to go off of it's funny it's kind of like just having some guidelines to aim for and you don't have to be perfect because those lines will be erased they will erase out of your block so you don't even have to be perfect at it you can pull off the lines if you have to and that's a-ok because those lines will race and no one will know that that's where you meant to stitch and your quilting will look that much better for it so if you find stippling to be a struggle to get into first start with those Wiggly you shapes just begin there and just stitch rows of that back and forth across a practice sandwich and that's just going to get you into that flow and that rhythm and movement and then as you get bored with that and fell like you can move on to something more challenging start bending it around and curling it into itself and adding more wiggles and bends you know that's how you make it more interesting and then of course if that is still a struggle mark the design on your fabric and just quote on the mark lines and that's the easiest method to go with now one other thing about free motion quilting that I think is important is your path that you take as you quote so if you'll notice and go back and watch from the beginning of the video I always work in a pattern from left to right and down a bit and then from right to left or I rotate the block and work straight down so let me show you and kind of emphasize this I work in rows because it works really well for my brain and it stops me from getting stuck in a corner so a lot of times when you work really randomly like let's say I started right smack in the middle of this block and just worked around randomly I could very easily fill in one corner completely and leave a whole corner empty and not be able to get into that area and fill it in so by working in rows like here I've just completed working all the way to the right and then now I'm going to fill straight down kind of filling right down to that bottom edge and as I start filling down where I'm also working my way back to the left this works a little bit like writing you know you fill in the lines of a piece of paper you know you don't start in the middle draw of writing a piece of paper and and work out from there it would be too random so by doing it this way you can see what you're doing you know where you're going next and you never get stuck in a corner you never get lost in a design which is really really helpful I'm here I'm finishing this up and one thing that you might also notice as you're quilting stippling is you might notice jerkiness so instead of smooth curves you might have more jerky stitches and if yours is looking something like this it could be the size of your stitches it could also be the movement of your hands and so keep that in mind if yours doesn't look like mine number one that's perfectly normal and it's nothing to be ashamed of or intimidated by this is a learning and growing process but here are a few tools that can help you along the way number one I always wear gloves these help me get a grip on the quilt so that way I can move it and position it easily I never lose traction on the fabrics very smooth and if I just use my plain hands without gloves oftentimes my hands are just sliding over the surface and not able to actually grip it another thing going to use is on the machine but itself and this is a supreme slider and it has a hole right in the center that you position right over the hole in your machine and what this does it does a couple things number one it's very slippery so it helps the quilt to slide and glide more easily on the quote on the machine surface so it doesn't feel hard to move so that helps a lot and then this also minimizes the contact between the feed dogs in the back of your quill those are the little teeth that move your fabric forward and remember you have a choice between dropping them or just turning your stitch length down to zero like I do now a lot of people wonder okay well if the feed dogs are up do they tear up the slider and you can see this area does get a little chewed up over time but I've been using this one for over a year and it's really not that bad so I think it can take it the one thing to keep in mind is that a supreme slider is a very delicate tool you can see it's only the thickness a couple sheets of paper it's not very thick and you can stitch through it so just make sure to keep it clean everyone so I'll take it off and on the pink side rinse it under your sink faucet and let it air dry and that will keep it free of lint so it will stick really nicely to your machine bed and it won't lift up one last tool that I use inside of the machine and this just helps my thread to look better and feed better and it is a little Genie magic bobbin washer it's basically just a small washer and this works in both side loading cases like this one and top loading so what you do is you take the washer you pop it in and then you wind your bobbin just like normal if this was a drop-in bobbin I would do the same thing I would drop it down into the case put the bobbin on top and wind it just like normal so what the bobbin washer does is it helps fill in those little gaps between the bobbin and the bobbin case and helps to reduce thread breaks like you know let's say your bobbin thread got tugged really hard and it the bobbin span backwards that is a backlash and it can cause a really nasty knot on the back of your quilt so the bobbin washer just helps the bobbin thread to glide as smoothly and evenly as your top thread and I use them in all my machines all the time so I put them in and pretty much forget about them I change them once a year at the new year so they don't get too worn out so that those are the tools that I used for free motion quilting but I would say ultimately the number one thing here is practice make a stack of practice sandwiches like these this is just a 9 inch square and I marked a 7 inch square in the middle and if you quilt one of these every single day I promise you you will see enormous enormous change in your skills and abilities within only a month because as you quilt and gain more experience you'll be able to understand how to hold the fabric how to position your hands how to use the speed of your machine and to keep these stitches balanced this is one of those techniques that is very different when it comes to anything that you use you're miss owing machine for and your machine is not doing the work for you because of that it's going to take a little bit more practice a little bit more patience in order to get the hang of it but I'm sure you can definitely master it so that's it for this video I really hope that you enjoy learning more about free motion quilting this is one of those techniques that can be a little challenging because you're using your machine in a totally different way in a very unusual way because of course we're not using those feed dogs and they're not feeding the fabric forward because of that you might see some ugly stitches and that's totally normal the quilt might also feel completely out of control so definitely invest in those extra tools that I mentioned in this video give those a try and you'll definitely see some improvement the more you quilt the better you'll get I promise if you enjoyed this video please subscribe to my youtube channel so you don't miss out on any new quilting videos coming out every week until next time let's go quilts

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 538,920

Rating: 4.9196668 out of 5

Keywords: machine quilting, Leah Day, machine quilting block party, free motion quilting, free motion quilt along, machine quilting tutorial, quilting tutorial, beginner quilting video, beginner quilting tutorial, quilting basics, quilting for beginners, beginner machine quilting, quilting basics for beginners, quilting basics video, youtube quilting basics, beginner free motion quilting, free motion quilting for beginners, freemotionquilting, beginner free motion quilting videos

Id: RzrOxAkNIGM

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2016