Free Motion Quilting Hack ~ Beginner Quilter Hack

hi friends this is tracy from the sewing channel welcome back and if you're new here welcome enough talking already let's get busy learning the most efficient way to learn free motion quilting first things first turn your machine off and then you're going to take your sewing foot off and your shank and your needle everything needs to be out with your machine off the best free motion quilters out there will always tell you that muscle memory is the way to go but when i try to draw out what i would like to put on a quilt on paper my muscle memory doesn't keep up when i get to the machine and practice on my quilt sandwich so that's why i came up with this you see it seems to work out that my muscle only remembers if i'm doing it the same identical way that i would actually quilt the quilt if you know what i mean make sure you cut your thread up top and then you're going to pull it out from the bottom we don't ever want to pull our thread up backwards we always want to come down then you're going to slip off your sewing bed and you'll find your feed dog button typically on the back of your machine make sure that your lever is pulled to where the teeth are underneath the line just like my picture there and if you take a look here you can see my feed dogs will go down as i flip that lever see and then they're gone it's best not to have the feed dogs up that way everything will glide nicely one of the tricks to this hack is having a shorter dry erase marker now you can see here the size of mine but when you take the lid off it's even shorter and this is exactly the size that works underneath my machine it's about three and three quarter inches tall with the lid off the next thing we need for our hack are some velcro strips now i used these by command they go on and come off beautifully damage free they're not soft like most velcro strips they have this hard plasticky feel to them they really grip onto each other and that's exactly what we need take a listen here they'll hold that dry erase marker in solid after i do a demonstration with the dry erase marker i'm going to share with you how to make this easy vinyl quilt sandwich that's absolutely perfect for this hack first you need to put one of the velcros on the dry erase marker now i put mine toward the top every sewing machine is very different so where you put your other velcro depends on your machine but you can see how close that i put it where my needle tightener screw is everything is right there when you position this dry erase marker the way that i have it it absolutely mimics how it would feel to free motion quilt this is how we get the pressure right sort of put your dry erase marker down into the vinyl but you don't want to press too hard down and then connect because then it'll be too tight you want a nice even flow right over top of that vinyl and it looks like i've achieved that here so that's great and you see i'm just playing around giving you a quick preview of what it looks like to erase here i'm actually using the eraser that came with the dry erase marker but i also used a damp paper towel to help me wipe as i went i also want you to take note here that every time i went to move the vinyl so that it made a mark i was also pressing onto my foot pedal so every time i made a move i would press down i was totally mimicking the way it would be if i was truly free motion quilting and when i'd stop i'd lift my foot up you can use these vinyl pieces over and over and over again now mine i connected to just a white piece of cotton fabric but you could always use clear vinyl and put a piece of paper underneath the clear vinyl that has the pattern of your quilt that you'd like to do and you can trace right along the pattern line i honestly have so much fun just drawing over onto the vinyl i come up with all kinds of weird stuff and right now i'm just doodling a meander all over just showing you the speed that i'm going this is all done in real time and when i don't like something i just simply erase it i mean that is too simple right i mean come on right in front of me i can erase it and just start over with a new slate i love the idea of that when i first started out free motion quilting i didn't know anything about it it took a lot of time and practice i used up so many pieces of batting and quilting cotton trying to make all these different quilt sandwiches and such and i just time after time after time and if i would have had this to do i think i would have been much further ahead what do you think let me know down in the comments as i'm practicing here i want you to notice i'm lifting up my hands and moving them just like i would do if i was doing free motion quilting and here i'm practicing going along the edge with my marker and that really helps me mimic what i'm going to actually do when i'm on my fabric you see i'm taking my time and i'm actually thinking about what i'm doing and that is where you're going to gain true muscle memory i believe anyways i mean that's how my brain works one of my favorite things about this hack is that i can totally erase it and i don't have to end up throwing the whole quilt sandwich in the garbage because it's already been sewn on i can just simply erase it right then and there that's wonderful and look no smudges on the hands i thought for sure do i have smudges on my hands because i'm erasing so much but no nothing and it does come off of your sewing machine too if you happen to get the dry erase marker on there it comes off with just a swipe coming up here soon i'm going to share with you how to make this really easy quilt vinyl sandwich and if you stay to the very end i'm actually going to do some real free motion quilting with a needle in and thread on a real quilt sandwich so you'll want to stay for that so i'll be quiet for a minute and you can watch me demonstrate this hack with the dry erase marker in real time i'm not going to speed it up at all i'm just going to play for a minute i really want you to get the feel for this hack [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] when you're done practicing simply take your dry erase marker unvelcro it take it off make sure you put the lid on it though erase all of the marks off of your vinyl practice sheet and put it away for the next time that you get an itch to practice some free motion quilting here's how i made the easy vinyl quilt sandwich i took some pellon vinyl fuse in glossy but you could probably use matte too i don't think it really matters and i just cut out a square and i used one piece of quilter's cotton just a cheapy stuff i had and then i also used a piece of bad the batting is what's going to be gliding across the bed of your sewing machine and it's really soft so that works out great so just follow the directions you're going to peel off your vinyl and lay it on top of your fabric and then you're going to put your iron over it and heat it up just like the directions say the piece that you peeled off the backing of the vinyl that's what you lay on top of the vinyl and iron and it's typically a medium heat i think i went a little too hot on mine and it kind of wrinkled a little bit but that's perfectly fine and since i don't want the vinyl to stick to the ironing board i'm going to just trim off that side piece so that it doesn't stick there i only want it to stick to my piece of fabric once i initially lay the vinyl down i just spread it out with my hands to make sure there's no wrinkles and then i laid that backing piece that came off of the vinyl down and then i just iron it on only for a few seconds though you don't want to stay on it otherwise it will burn and really wrinkle i got my vinyl at walmart and it was on the discount sale rack because it was so old and it had a lot of wrinkles and creases in it so i got mine for like really cheap like i want to say like 99 cents a yard or even 25 cents here i can't remember now but it was so dirt cheap that i had to buy the whole entire bolt of it so that's why some of mine has wrinkles in it but i'm not too worried about it and it didn't bother the practice quilt sandwich either so it was fine all you do then is just lay your batting down and then lay your piece of vinyl fuse fabric on top of that with the vinyl shiny side up and that's it i did add some glue all the way around to help those two pieces stick together i added the glue on the top of the fabric side of the vinyl i pressed the glue in really good on those two pieces and then i had a quilt practice sandwich in vinyl go figure who knew right okay let's get on to the real deal are you ready i want a free motion quilt i love it so much i don't do it nearly as much as i really want to i really should do it more but before i can get going on this i need to put my machine all back together so i'm going to add my free motion quilting foot on and screw it on really good and once i have that all nice and tight i'm going to add my needle back up into the needle shaft area and i'm going to tighten that screw as well now it's time to turn that machine back on now i'm pulling off my sewing bed to make sure that my feed dogs are down i know they're down but this is just my oh i don't know what do you call my ritual that i do i make sure that everything is set right before i do the free motion quilting so that's what i was doing there and they're definitely down and so now i am feeding my thread through and here i'm gonna show you a real nice close-up shot of my automatic needle threader it is truly amazing this machine right here worth every penny for this right here oh yeah i totally respect my automatic needle threader i didn't have one for years but now i do oh here i wanted to share with you this my machine i actually have to go in and change it to free motion quilting there's an on and off and that's what i'm doing right there once i select the on button right there you can see the free motion foot is on the screen a picture of it and ready to go and just so you can see things better i'm going to go ahead and turn my light off there we go that's a much better view for you guys my quilt sandwich here consists of a top layer of cotton in the middle is some regular batting and on the bottom is another piece of quilting cotton the first thing i always do is drop my needle down and that grabs the bobbin thread underneath and pulls it up through to the top fabric and then i pull that fabric that's what i'm pulling on there with my thumb i pull that bobbin thread up and over and that way i know that both threads are up and nothing is going to make a hot mess nest underneath there everything's going to be all good and then i'll go a couple stitches and then i actually do cut off the tail because i don't like that it bothers me it's in my way so when i started free motion quilting right here like you see me doing i actually felt like something was not right and it actually was my height of my free motion quilting foot so that's what you see me doing right there i'm going in and changing the actual height lifting it up a little bit because there was too much pressure hitting down onto that fabric and so that's something that you tweak as you get to know more about free motion quilting and what suits your machine and how your fabric feeds through it and i could definitely feel a drag and and i don't want that i had thought about cutting this next bit of footage out of here but i thought no i want to show you because see my height still wasn't right as you see me pushing this fabric through see how bunched up right there i'm like what is going on it's still not right so i tweaked it a little bit more and this is why you always practice right before you do your quilt so that way you can get out any tweaks that need to be tweaked and so once i changed it that last time then i knew i was good to go so you see me i'm just floating along here i'm not i don't really have a pattern in mind i'm just going so again i'll be quiet and you can just watch me play for a minute [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] did you find value in my video today if you did could you do me a favor and click the subscribe button and be sure to hit the like on this video until next time on the sewing channel take care

Channel: The Sewing Channel

Views: 42,419

Rating: 4.9237189 out of 5

Keywords: free motion quilting hack, quilting hack, free motion quilting practice, how to muscle memory free motion quilting, muscle memory free motion quilting, beginner free motion quilting, how to free motion quilt, free motion quilting for beginners, how to practice free motion quilting, dry erase marker for free motion quilting, dry erase marker hack for free motion quilting, The sewing channel, the sewing channel on youtube, learn free motion quilting, free motion quilting basics

Id: vzjVnSQW3Uc

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021