Free Motion Quilting - Loops on Triangles & Borders

hi this is Nancy Ralph's in love with OnPoint TV and we're gonna do just a quick little live here like I say quick like if my videos are ever quick so 20 minute we're gonna show for a 20 minute video on some free motion quilting we've done a lot of masked videos I hope that everybody is being safe but I personally am maybe a little masked out nobody's asking me for them I've got 20 in a bag so I can give away if somebody needs them but I'm ready to do some well things so I'm hoping that you are also what I wanted to take you through today is the quilting on a simple kids quilt so this is a quilt that I showed you a little bit back I made a label for it next week we'll put on the binding and the label and I'll show you how that'll all work but this is for my new nephew Nolan and Nolan I hope you're not watching well okay I don't think no one's watching but I hope his mom is not watching so this will be his quilt so the idea here is that it's a simple quilt made for a young man who's about 6 or 7 years old but the thing about making a quilt for a six or seven year old is you need to know that that quilt is going to be abused I would not make a quilt for a child that I thought should stay in pristine condition I expect this quilt to be used a lot which means it's gonna be washed a lot and when it boots is gonna be washed a lot you need to be sure that you do enough quilting to keep everything together so the quilting that I'm gonna do is gonna be with that kind of frame of mine I'm not doing art quilting I'm doing some simple things but I want it to really be well quilted so that when Nolan uses it and loves it it can be washed a gazillion times and last maybe till he's in high school that would be awesome alright so taking you through some of the tools that I use as always I'm gonna be using the superior so fine polyester thread in the top piecing is done with the hundred percent cotton but you can use polyester for the quilting and this just works really really well in the bobbin also a polyester and this machine I can use the super Bob's which is the bottom line thread also by superior it's a 60 weight thread works really great the bobbin because it makes the bobbin actually last longer because the thread is so fine so for this quilt I think I have this dark gray in the bobbin so let me show you what my backing is so this is my backing small kind of busy print so I've got some white going on on the top and some blue and red so that gray works really well covering everything up Plus that it's a small busy print so that covers things up I'm gonna use the schmutz top stitched needle in a size ninety a little bit of word of warning I had my machine just got a tune up but I don't think it's quite right so some threads have been breaking so hopefully that won't happen but typically using the top stitch in a size ninety means that I'm not gonna have thread breakage and I love that I also will be marking the quilts at one point and we'll be using the Boheme this is the chalk pencil that I love so much for marking on quilts so those are the tools that I'm gonna use I'll talk about this little case a little bit later let me put this stuff away okay sorry there okay wait as in on some shelf somewhere okay so before you actually do your quilting I recommend that you draw your design I have from the beginning of time found that if you draw the design ahead of time that it really just does help with the continuing process with your timing keeping everything smooth and consistent so I kind of brought my pad here and we're gonna do some drawing and the first stitching we're gonna do will be on the half square triangles which I'm trying to decide where my unstitched have to where triangles are and I'll find those but before I do that let's see what the drawing looks like so for this design one of the triangles is white and one of them is red so I'm gonna stitch in the white with the white thread and on the red with the red thread so I'm gonna show you what my design would look like if I was doing this row of triangles for the white alright so I'm hoping that my hand won't be too much in the way so the idea is you're gonna start at a point and you're gonna come down own to the next point and this space should be a little bit less than a quarter of an inch all right so then once I've done that then I'm gonna come up to the top part of the triangle and then wait a minute did I just do that backwards yes I did okay don't do that one yeah sorry come down then we'll go to the next one because this is white red white red white red so I want to stay just on the white so come down then come down again then come down again and see you're just kind of bopping down on all of the whites then you'll pop over to the edge and then come back up and now I'm gonna go to the next triangle pop over and up pop over and up and then pop over so pretend I didn't do that the first time and then up and so that is gonna be the continuous design for stitching on the white now if this were a quilt that were made for an adult or something that was not going to be heavily washed you might not want to quote the red and I'll show you what that looks like if you don't quilt the red but for a young man's quilt I want to quote the red so again when it comes to this I'd start with my red thread popping continuously down the line of triangles and this is all done with a free motion foot and then come back up popping all the way up to where you started so that's what that design is gonna look like when I do the next design will draw that also so let me put this out of the way and take you to the aerial so right up here is where we're gonna quote so I told you I would show you what it would look like so this you can tell here that I have done the stitching on the white or yellow I kind of intermixed sort of my colors and I did no stitching yet on the red I really like that look I like that look because the yellow stays down and the red pops up and that looks really cool and like I said if this weren't a quilt for an adult I would consider leaving the red on quilted but for a kids quilt I want to put lots of quilting on it so let me get my Lickety grip you can wear quilting gloves if you I use the Lickety grip but word of warning Lickety grip is no longer available so we're in the process of testing out a couple of other things that will help keep your hands tacky when you're quilting so a lot of people have given me some really great ideas thank you very much and we are investigating those so gonna stitch on the white I'm gonna start here in this corner so with this machine it has a needle threader so I do not need to bring the needle up to the top but I'm gonna start right here I'm gonna my needle is in the down position and as I stitch I'm just gonna go on up to the point of the white and then I stop right there now I want to cut off my thread if I could find my scissors I would probably fall off my throat but right this second I can't find my scissors so we'll cut off that thread later okay trust me now I'm gonna come down when I get to that point I'm gonna go to the next one so the thing that I really like about this design is it's really great for beginners so that they what do you say and thought oh the light okay Athena is like giving me sign language and I'm not sure what she's telling me there we go is that better okay so what I like about this design is as a beginner you need to go from that point to this point then you stop then you can reposition think about where your next reducta direct that's a big word next location is and then go on up to that location keeping your stitch length consistent by the movement of your hands and the tempo of your sewing machine now what I often times will do is I will just continue and continue and continue so if I were doing this and not having to show you how I would just continue on down this line all the way to the end then come back and then sometimes I'll just turn the corner I like to keep my continuous my free motion quilting as continuous as possible so I don't like stopping very often unless I absolutely have to so when you're doing proceeding with your free motion quilting I recommend that you think about a plan of attack you know all right I'm gonna do this row that I'm gonna go down this row catch these last guys on this end and now I'm gonna return all the way so this is where I'm just doing that bopping all the way down okay so this is gonna go all the way back up then I'm gonna get around to the other top side so once I get here well let me go back here and then we'll be able to do this square [Music] so remember you only have to go one square at a time you don't even have to try to do two squares at a time you can come here and stop reposition come on up here and stop all right so right here is my end so I did my tiny stitches and I'm gonna cut my thread off and we're ready to move on to the next section the next section is going to be these squares now these squares I'm gonna stitch with a white thread so that you'll be able to see what I'm stitching but honestly I think it's just fine to be in a white thread it'll look cool and the idea with this is I'm gonna do loop-de-loops so this is what my leaf tea loos look like drawn let me show you what they look like when I stitch them looky-loos are just gonna be a continuation of capital Elle's if you happen to have a capital L in your name it kind of helps because you know how to make a capital L but the idea is to come around make a capital L or the loop going one way then in the other direction now you do not have to go in the other direction so what I mean by that is I can do two loops down and then one loop up that's okay this is a really really great time for you to practice your speed to be consistent with your stitch speed so your machine going faster or your hands going faster and then the Machine going slower and your hands going slower so when you're drawing be consistent don't be doing the real fast turns and then slowing down and then real fast turns and then slowing down be consistent with your speed also the sizes of these can vary but I would recommend that you make them approximately the size of a quarter and I say that because if you make them the size of a dime you're gonna be stitching on that one block forever because it's gonna take you forever to get that one block filled as you can see whereas if you make on the size of a quarter that is the perfect quilting density to make a very soft and supple quilt but yet you're not spending all day long with the quilting I also like to start a little bit differently and stop a little differently I didn't do it up there but instead of stop starting can you see the corner here instead of starting in a corner and then coming up and starting out your loops I have found that I like better if I start kind of the loop a loops distance away from the corner let's say that's my corner if I start here and then come over and catch the end of that loop as it there the beginning that it started within the loop and when I end it the same thing just come around and end in the loop that way you don't have any of those lines going in and out and so it's just a little bit more cohesive I guess boy that was a big one for today alright so to do this I first need to take my pins out so I have my safety pins in here and this is my case so that I keep my safety pins in it's a school box a friend of mine Julie had given this to me years and years and years ago from when I was teaching some classes and she thought this was a cool tip that she'd seen in some magazine and sure enough it is it just holds all your pins so now when I want to base the quilt they're already open and then as I'm taking them out of the quilt I just poke them right into the styrofoam love that idea all right so ready for our loop DS so I'm gonna start up here and like I said I'm gonna start about the distance away from the corner that is one of the loops and as I start I'm gonna take tiny stitches teeny tiny stitches there that's my locking stitch then I'm gonna make my loop and come around and catch that so now I have made a complete circle now I can continue with my loops now I want to show you kind of sum the idea of the speed this is a very nice speed this speed for me is very comfortable it I don't feel rushed by it but let's say you want to go a little bit slower now I'm gonna go slower do you see that now my hands are moving much slower you might also notice that the slower I go the less smooth my curves are if I go a nice consistent a little bit faster I think this is my speed and this on this sewing machine if we can come up a little bit over here you'll see that this has a speed control oh it's a little bit dark but it does have a speed control most modern-day sewing machines I'd say in the last 10 years have a speed control on it so if you're looking for a new machine I would highly recommend you'd find one with a speed control now you'll also notice on this machine that is a high speed machine I am now going to make this machine not even go all the way up and just gonna go half way so that the machine will be really fast and so my hands will be moving really fast and I get really stressed when it does this so this is why I don't do it but I want you to know that if you're comfortable with that speed then that's okay you can go fast so pedal to the metal now my hands are moving much faster the machine is much louder I get a little bit of anxiety like I'm on the Autobahn or something so you can go faster with your machine but then your hands have to move faster now I'm going to move it down to a more acceptable Midwest girls type speed there I like that that's better and I do adjust the speed on my machine so that my foot can go all the way down my foot is all the way down but the machine can't go any faster because I have adjusted the speed with my machine instead if you don't have a speed control on your machine then you have to try to adjust the speed and it's kind of like you know tapping your head and rubbing your belly at the same time where you're trying to make your hands move consistently and at the same time you're trying to adjust the foot pedal so I'm gonna just come up here to the end of this so we can finish this block and I'm gonna pretend this is my end so just like I started I'm gonna take my loop and just stop right in that loop I took my tiny stitches so just went around and then copied over that line and then took my Stinney stitches to stop it so now I'm gonna cut my thread off all right so that's what so can you see those loop-de-loops pretty well yeah you can see that pretty good okay so the next thing I want to show you is quilting on the border now I want you to know that I really would like to have been able to quilt this with a white thread so that you could really see it but honestly that just wouldn't look very nice before you start yes there's a question Vicky has asked does the styrofoam make it the pins dollar box Oh for 15 years at least and my pins go in it and come out of it and I've never thought about whether or not they've gotten dull or not Vicki I can tell you that they don't live very long sorrowful because I'm always I always have a quote ready to quell so if I am sorry trying to talk and thread a machine at the same time that's kind of like magic so I'm always in the process of quilting a quote so once I get this one quilted I'll grab another quilt top and it'll be ready to be quilted so I'll be basting it and I'll be basting it with my pens so honestly my pens don't spend a lot of time in that styrofoam box they spend a lot of time in a quilt waiting to be quilted to for me to have the time to actually quilt it so thank you very much for your question Vicki all right so my machine is just about threaded okay all right so the next clips that kind of loop that in there all right so my next quilting design is the border and it is going to be a loopy kind of design page if you don't have a sketchbook in your studio I recommend you get a sketchbook in your studio so that you can be practicing these things and the idea here this is gonna be a corner because this is gonna be the border and I want you to think about the fact that the border does not have a binding on it yet right so if this book is the edge of my actual quilt top you need to imagine a half inch line away from the edge because when you're done quilting and you put the binding on your binding will take up that quarter of an inch then the edge and you don't want your design to go all the way like here on the quilt you don't want it to go all the way into this edge here because the border binding will be taking that up so always imagine 1/2 inch from the edge and then for this design you're gonna also imagine a diagonal line and I'm gonna draw this on the quilt but I'm going to show you why so here's the idea you're gonna be loop de lui back and forth as you come to the corner of the quilt you want to plan it so that you've got one loop de loop right here at the corner and then come up just like normal and now you're going to make the corner so that means one big loop deloo and come back down now this one big loop de Loup is so much bigger than the quilting space is created with the other designs that you have to do additional quilting in that loop de loop which means just put it to your drop right inside that loop de loop then you're ready to go back on into the quilt making a loop de loop then a bottom one and continue so that's what my loop de loop border corner looks like so comes looky-loo one loop then a big loop de Loup with a teardrop in the middle and then another loop delude to get me back into the quilting process alright so we're gonna do that now like I was talking about so with this you can if you choose actually mark that half inch oh my goodness is that a white I don't know you see that okay we can I think it's a green a a green pencil led that's why I'm going wait a minute so I don't know can you see that okay so here is a mark that's a half inch away you could do that around the entire quilt if you were having troubles staying away from the edge I usually just I it'd take that pin out little case Larry but I definitely want to draw a diagonal line here and that's gonna help gage my big loop de Loup and my teardrop when I get to it alright so you can see that really well so keeping like a little small ruler you can't even see it it's so clear a little small ruler and a pencil handy next to your machine as always good you don't have to run all over the place trying to find it alright so my stitching stopped here this is where I'm gonna start my stitching then oh we found my scissors did we find my scissors Oh Athena fill my scissors good job alright we're gonna start here my needle in the doll position my start is to take teeny tiny stitches so that's gonna be my lock I also want you to note that when I basted this I only have what 1/2 inch of leftover backing and the batting went exactly to the border that is bad basting basting should be so that you have two to three inches of backing and batting here so when I'm stitching this because I don't have additional batting here I'm gonna be like holding it like with my two hands here this is not very easy to do but I'm a professional I think I can handle it alright so I'm gonna do a loop-de-loop get that thread out of the way let me cut that off I do love these scissors they're kind of these tipped ones for embroiderers are great for cutting threads off of quilts when you're quilting them okay now I'm gonna cross over as I'm nearing the edge of the corner I'm gonna be just considering alright I think I'll be able to get two more loop Deleuze before I get to that corner so I'm just kind of thinking and planning ahead staying a half inch away from the border I'm in the borders edge so that I'll be able to do put my binding on and not cut anything off alright so here is my last loop to do I'm gonna come up as if I was just gonna continue those loop dnews there's my last one now I'm gonna do my big hoopty-do bring them all the way up to that edge stop when I get to my pencil line do a tear drop inside that loop-d-loop and now I'm ready to continue my loop dealing is going back up back down and for me this is a very comfortable design I just I could do this all day long it's also very fast when I do stop I do try to stop where the lines are gonna criss cross so there you go that's the end of our little video honestly that was pretty quick did I keep it under 20 minutes 24 I don't have any sense of time whatsoever so I hope you enjoyed that I hope that you're able to get back to doing some quilting maybe some finishing some UFOs I've seen a lot of people posting oh I'm working on these UFOs I mean this is a good use of our time it certainly wasn't a planned use of our time but use the time that you have really wisely get some things done alright if you have any questions my email is quilting with Nancy and gmail.com super easy to remember you can send me any questions you can put any comments down underneath this video and I'll try to get to answering those as quickly as possible but honestly email is a little bit faster and if you liked the video please give us a thumbs up we really like thumbs up and if you don't like the video Venis cringing because I'm gonna say instead of giving us a thumbs down why don't you just stop watching it so if you don't like it nobody's making you watch it okay she hates it when I say that I hope that you all have a really great day and I'll see you next week

Channel: OnPoint-TV and Quilting with Nancy

Views: 11,259

Keywords: Quilting, sewing, machine quilting, free motion machine quilting, beginner quiltmaking, new quilter, quiltingwithnancy, sewingwithnancy, making a quilt, finishing a quilt, sewing a quilt

Id: xrKnAjpCQ4k

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020