Free Motion Quilting Made Easy

[Music] hello welcome i'm pauline from pqw i'm delighted you can join me in this little session we're going to talk about free motion quilting i know it's a big struggle to a lot of you so let me take you right back to basics i'm going to put an l plate on you we're going to learn to drive our sewing machine so that we can get better and better at free motion cooling and i believe learning to free motion quilt is exactly like learning to drive a car we have an accelerator and we have to steer the fabric so we need to start slow i think a lot of people think we've got to go flat out when we're free motion quitting that does help but you need to get practiced at going slow you need to get practiced at all your curve shapes and you need to get a mental image of a design in your brain so that you should never have to trace a design onto your fabric to put on but as a beginner i would suggest you get something really helpful to help you get the design onto your fabric like a stencil we have the great collection of feather stencils now for you to be able to trace your designs on we have our great dot to dot templates that can allow you to mark beautiful designs onto your quilt so but watch other youtube videos on that we have lots out there for you to learn from but let's get our machine set up for free motion quilting and let's take you through some little hints and tips to help you get on the road to being really good at free motion cooling so now at the sewing machine we need a foot on our machine that will allow us to free motion quilt now free motion quilting if you've never done it before is about moving the fabric under the needle we're going to drop our feed dogs these little teeth that sit on our machine we need to drop those down i have a button on the side of my machine that i can press in that automatically drops my feed dogs now all machines are different some machines it's in underneath around the bobbin area some machines there's a button at the front have a look at your manual or or talk to your dealer about how you drop your feed dogs if you cannot drop your feed dogs put your stitch length to zero that automatically disengages them now use a good quality needle i use the titanium top stitch needles because i want to penetrate through the three layers of fabrics i don't want to get skipped stitches this needle works brilliantly for you size 80 titanium top stitch needles is the needles i use all the time now talking about our foot this is a free motion quilting foot for my machine i use a benina when i brought this machine the foot that come with the machine was completely closed in it was a complete circle which meant if i wanted to stitch on a line or stitch in the ditch i couldn't see where i was going so i invested in the open toe free motion foot and i think you can buy these for every brand of machine just give your model and the brand of your machine to your dealer they should be able to supply you with the right foot so we'll pop the foot on we've got the feed dogs dropped now a couple of little other hints and tips is you don't want to put pressure on your shoulders because that really is agonizing particularly when you're quilting a big quilt like this it's just is difficult to to sit at your machine for too long so what i do i always have two rubber door wedges under the back of the machine get these from the hardware store just tilt your machine forward and put those underneath if you have a big extension table on your machine you may be able to wind the legs up or down but if you can't buy four rubber door wedges put two under your machine and two under the back of your extension table that way it'll all be on the same level but by tilting the machine forward i don't have to hunch over so i have them under my machine for every bit of sewing i do the other thing i would suggest to you because we need to start you off at a slower speed i'm going to have my machine on the highest speed and i'm going to get you to learn to control the speed through your accelerator so machine on high speed the best way you can control the speed of your needle is put your foot pedal directly under the needle now by doing that it's going to allow you to sew slower plus you're going to sit at much much better posture excuse me because when we put our foot pedal out to the right we do that because the cord comes out on the right hand side i find that our foot pedal keeps running away from us and i also find that my right foot is too used to pushing the accelerator down too hard so put it under you put your foot pedal directly under the needle and put your left foot on it that will allow you to stitch at a much slower speed just drop this down then we're now going to sit with a much better posture we're going to come in close to the machine now the next thing that we have struggle with particularly if we're quilting a big quilt it's getting that that movement of that fabric sliding through and i find that as we get the bulk of a quilt going through there it really gets hard to push through so to eliminate that if you don't already have one invest in a sew slip mat now it has a big cutout in it that's where my feed dogs are going to work i'm going to take the brown paper off the back of the mat keep that brown paper to store your mat back in if you're not going to be using it sometimes now we have a long section here and a shorter section now the short section is designed to come into the bed of your machine and the long section is designed to go out over your extension table i don't use it that way i like to use it so the long part comes to the front of the machine because then i don't get any drag here i want the quilt to slide up and over but you know you might like it a different way now the back side of this that i took the brown paper off it's sticky it's tacky so it grabs to the bed of the machine so what we need to do is draw our bobbin thread up through that hole so it's not stuck underneath the mat once we get our bobbin thread up pat the mat so it's it adheres to your bed of your machine now when you take it off there's no residue left on your machine it's just tacky it's not really sticky you need to wash these mats regularly in hot soapy water because that sticky side will collect fluff and lint and then one day it won't stick so we give great care instruction sheets with this when you purchase them from us so now we have a slippery surface so when we put our fabric under here we have no problem with moving the fabric under the needle now one rule with free motion quilting and this is the only rule i really give is if we have our needle going too fast and we move our fabric slow we're going to get really really tiny stitches which is not good if we have the needle going slow and we move the fabric fast we're going to get quite large stitches so your first thing you need to do is when you're teaching yourself to free motion quilt is draw some straight lines on your fabrics just use a good quality marking pen draw some straight lines you know just get yourself a little ruler draw some straight lines and teach yourself to stitch on those lines to start with now i just need to get the right colored lead in my pencil so that you can see what i'm doing here so i need to use the dark lid now i've got a white lid again too many pencils okay so i'm just going to draw some straight lines on this fabric now what we need to do is teach ourselves to stitch towards ourselves we need to stitch backwards and then we need to teach ourselves to stitch to the side and it's just all about learning how the fabric moves under the needle to you get those stitches nice and even so let's get started now because when we put our pressure foot down it doesn't sit right on the fabric because we've got to have that movement so we can stitch in any direction so if we don't keep pressure on our fabric we're going to get very uneven stitches so let's just get started so now i would suggest that you put your hands in a v position like so and just learn to get those stitches nice and even just go slow and your left foot will control that speed for you nicely now when you've done a few rows like this stitching towards yourself come over to another line and then we'll teach ourselves to go backwards so what we're going to do when we go backwards we pull the fabric forward because a lot of people when i teach this as a hands-on class they go to press the reverse button to go backwards you don't need to do that when you free motion quilting because you're pulling the fabric in the direction you want to go now when you want to teach yourself to stitch to the side or just get rid of this thread we're just going to position our hands and we're going to as i stitch to my right i pull my fabric with my left hand stitch up to your hand stop and then reposition your hands then we can go backwards now i can pull with my right hand as i stitch to the left so what we need to be doing is making sure those stitches are even then we can come forward so if you sit and practice just doing something like a maze just going in and out teaching yourself how to control the speed of the needle and as you get better you'll be able to speed up because you would have learned how to move the fabric under the needle then you'll be able to go at a much faster speed now one thing that happens here if i'm stitching along and i've got my hands on my fabric to keep the pressure on it as i'm stitching if i move my hands as i stitch it'll jump to the side because we've lost the pressure off the fabric so to avoid any of that and to avoid sitting at my machine like this with my thumbs forward and my elbows out if you don't already know about the purple quilting hoop this is a weighted hoop so much weight in it this is the pressure so put this on the machine so instead of sitting like this and keeping the pressure around the needle with your hands and forcing your elbows out and your shoulders up try using the hoop because you then will sit completely back in your chair put your shoulders right back in the chair i've got the machine tilted so i can see the needle i've got my table low and my chair just at a nice height and off i go now if you stitch like this you'll find you'll get your stitches perfectly even all the time now if i take one hand off my stitch does not change it stays perfectly as it should so i absolutely believe 100 in this hoop and the mat underneath and it will start to make you a much better quilter a lot of people have purchased these hoops through the years but when they tell me they can't use them it doesn't work for them i see them trying to use it like this i see that their fingers are forward or their thumbs forward like this which instantly is putting too much pressure on the hoop which puts too much pressure on the fabric it also will send your elbows out it'll send your shoulders up so we're going to put thumb to finger thumb to finger and all we're going to do is have our thumb and the first finger on the hoop elbows tucked in i always say to everybody that i teach free motion quilting too have manners at your sewing machine no elbows no wings tuck them in use the hoop then you can stitch wherever you want to stitch now i'm going to stop and i'm now going to do some other free motion i'm going to do some teardrops so i'm doing a little teardrop i'm then going to come around it again i'm going to do another teardrop and if you're a beginner stop at the end of the teardrop now don't try and drive the fabric around under the needle you've got to glide it it's all about gliding it's all about stitching at the right speed so you can control that curve as i said on the introduction it's like driving a car if you're going to go flat out and really erratic you're going to crash at the corners so as a beginner start slow take your time you could draw this shape onto your fabric you could use one of our dot to dot templates and put some beautiful designs on your fabrics it took me a long time to teach myself shapes and the only way i could learn to do shapes was sit at my machine draw patterns onto my fabric and stitch over and over and over the shape till i developed a muscle memory in my brain it's like learning to write your name and and talking about writing your name one of the best things you can start teaching yourself at your machine is how to stitch your name out because you're going we know how to do that because we've we've taught our brain how the shapes work so just sit at your machine and write words with your machine your needle is like a pencil just guide with the hoop under that needle and teach yourself how to write names and it's very very easy to do because you've developed that muscle memory but to do our feathers our spirals our teardrops all of those beautiful shapes we can put onto quilts it takes time to practice and that's what you need to do let me know how you go because i'd love to help you on the journey of getting you better and better at free motion quilting and don't forget i now do all of my quilts cool as you go because this is my beautiful machine i'm not wanting to upgrade to something bigger not just yet anyway but if i want to put a whole big quilt through here it's too much for this space it's too much to move through so that's why i'm now doing all my quilts called as you go so watch all of our youtube videos and learn how you can do that too so when you go onto our youtube channel please subscribe hit that bell hit it hard so that you're going to then get a notification when all of our new videos are out for you to learn from us at pqw also go to our website www.pqw.com.au have a look around subscribe to our newsletter because we've got some exciting things coming and i would love for you to get our regular newsletters and just stay in touch so happy quilting don't forget all the little tips that i've just given you it's my way that i quilt and i find it i'm so relaxed at the machine and it's made me a much better quilter so bye for now [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Pauline's Quilters World

Views: 9,578

Rating: 4.9775281 out of 5

Keywords: Pauline's Quilters World, pqw, quilting, pauline rogers, sasher tools, sashers, free motion quilting, free motion quilting for beginners, beginner free motion quilting, learn free motion quilting, fmq

Id: wbtltiR7rbw

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021