Free Motion Quilting with Stencils - Master the stipple and leaf meander

hello and welcome to quilt addicts Anonymous today I'm going to teach you how to machine quilt on your own home sewing machine - in free motion quilting and we're going to use full line stencil in order to do that and the reason why I recommend you start with these stencils is you are then able to kind of have a guide because if someone tells you stipple ZAR super easy all you do is go around and you have gentle curves and you don't overlap your lines that's easy to somebody who's been doing it for a while it's very challenging to somebody who is never cool to the curb before who or who doesn't know how to get out of a corner very easily so what these do is they will allow you to mark your quilt top very easily and get that muscle memory down and that muscle memory is key in order to be able to quilt either on your own home sewing machine or on your long arm I quilted on my own home sewing machine first and then went to the long arm and I found that even though the motion is different when you're on your home sewing machine you're moving your fabric when you're moving your long arm it's still doing the same thing so for me the muscle memory transfers very well I know that's not the same for everyone but this will give you a good starting point so to get started what I recommend you to do is you get some of the fabric that you regret buying and this one I'm using black so that way you guys can see it really well on camera when I put the chalk on and then you need some pounce you probably have seen this in stores we've got it at shop quilt attics honest calm comes in a couple of different colors we have three that I find very useful so there is the ultimate pounce part powder this is white and it irons off which is great because then you don't have to worry about getting all your lines off so just go away and they stay away then we also have pink and blue and we stop these because you want to be able to see your chalk obviously because otherwise you don't know where to quilt and you want to have colors that will contrast with whatever is going on in your fabric so for example once I was doing a baby quilt that had blue white and green and so I mark that with a paint chalk because was going to contrast with everything whereas the white would have not shown up on the white and the blue would have not shown up on the blue so sometimes you may need a couple of different colors to mark one quilt but you'll kind of get used to that if you want to start with one just start with the ultimate pants part powder it's like a tongue twister ultimate sounds powder because that's the iron off stuff and then you can just get a bunch of dark sandwiches to test out with and practice with and then you can sort of get the others as you need them depending on what fabrics used in your quilt top now one quick note about these the colored chalk is not you can't iron that off you either need to brush it away with like your machiners quilting gloves or a lint roller that's like cloth or you can wash it and it'll go away if you put your iron on it it will heat set it and then you're gonna cry you can't get it off it's possible but not ideal so do not iron any of the color chalk so I'm going to show you the two that we use in classes at quilt at assignments in Rock Island we're going to do an all-over stipple meander and then all over leaf meander and I choose these two stencils in class because your learning curves and your learning points and pretty much every single free motion quilting design either has curves points or some combination of the two so once you can kind of get that muscle memory downs then you can work from that the idea is that you don't have to use these forever you use them until you are confident enough to give it a try on your own and you have that muscle memory ingrained in your body and you're able to more accurately execute what you have in your mind sighs so let's get started so I'm going to start with this large meander there also is a small Mandor with it but that's more for like micro stippling I know my crow sibling is really technically smaller than this but we're gonna start with the big one and so don't worry now if yours ever gets wrinkled like this this material is basically the same thing that a t-shirt screen printing is made out of so you could iron it and we actually just use these last night in class so gave me the idea to do the video so all of you could see it and so you can see that's a white powder that we use is actually going away this looks more green now that it did beforehand these things are fully reversible as well so you can use both sides of the template so that's really cool I have just layered a couple of fat quarters with some leftover batting and for this when you're working on your home sewing machine I recommend that you use cotton or 8020 batting because it's gonna stick to your cotton fabric and then you don't have to go through like spray basting or pinning or anything when you're just working with something this small it all stick together and it's just a practice sample anyway so it's totally fine you don't have to worry about it alright so I'm going to open up my pom pad which is not as clean as the other ones because I use mine often so my new is quite dusty right now so when you get it it comes with a bag of chalk and you can get refills of this if you need it but you always want to have one bounce pad per color so like if I wanted to put blue in here later I wouldn't want to do that you would want to get a separate pounds for that so this guy pops off it's like a bank from when you were a kid and what you want to do is fill this for when you do it for the first time all the way up to the top and now if you get it everywhere it's always a challenge and when people have trouble with these when they say it's not working they usually didn't climb it correctly so what you want to do is just make sure that you take this that very seriously so once I have that filled all the way to the top I'm gonna put this in and this is the important part with the plastic part so on the bottom you want to bang this 50 tons against a hard surface like your sewing table so pretend your significant other just did that one thing that urge you all the time take out some aggression or your close relative just posted something political on Facebook or you went to the store with a toddler and let them go through with one of the little mini carts those mini cards are to encourage liquor sales for the adults I'm convinced just kidding I love my toddler but don't let them push the cart you'll be there like ten times as long as you need to so once you have bang that again enough time you're going to pop your top off fill it all the way up to the top again and then bang it 50 more times when you're filling it for the first time and you should have a nice white coating all over on this if it isn't or if it's another color it should be blue or pink and if it isn't coated very well then that means that the powder has not gone through to the pad to swipe off so step number one you got to do that and when you're like running out so you're working on this a lot you if you're ever having trouble getting that just swipe through it's time to do that again I've got this lined up you can see where the start is here and where the end is here I'm going to show you how to flip that over to restart it I'm just kind of starting in the middle here because this is just a little sample piece so what you want to do is you're gonna take your pounce pad out and holding one end really still because if this shifts on you then it is you're gonna get like double vision on your line so you want to make sure you kind of hold it nice and still I'm going to scoop it off now it's called the pounce pad so you may be tempted to like do this on it that's just gonna get chalk everywhere like you know grade school eraser memory what you want to do is just swipe it across the top like that now before you go ripping this whole thing out of way what you want to kind of pull up your sides and make sure that it has transferred really well like I could go over that bit a little more if I wanted to I definitely gonna go over this edge a little bit more I can see it but I want you guys to be able to see it really well on camera gonna do that alright so you can see I got a little bit of a little bit in there so I'm just gonna rub that off with my finger we could iron it off too but I want to real quickly just flip this over and if it's hot then they the chocolate transfer okay so now since our start was over here and our end is over here what I need to do is flip this over because this is fully reversible and some of the templates will have registration marks on them so you can line them up real easy but what I want to do is kind of put my fingernail where that tip is and guide it in to where that line ended up and then kind of straighten it out so that I have a nice straight line obviously that's easier if you have like straight blocks to kind of line it up with as well so now I'm holding it again gonna swipe again going down the rest of the way looking pretty good alright so within just a couple of minutes I was able to swipe half of this fat quarter and get chalk on it and now I'm gonna be ready to go now here's one note about this this chalk is meant to come off eventually so what that means is you want to handle this carefully and you wouldn't want to like mark your entire quilt top all at once you would want to mark like one panel from you know top to bottom if you were doing like starting in the middle and that way it will stay in place for that one section you're doing and then you can move it because a lot of times you might find that the chalk is gone by the time you're done sewing it that's good that's what we wanted to do we want to stay on long enough to see it to quilt it and then go away so whenever I'm quilting that I always use my machiners quilting gloves they've got little grippies on the fingertips that help me move the fabric around really easily which is really important with this because one that's gonna have less wrist and shoulder strain and two you're not gonna be like grabbing the fabric as much because you want to make sure that you just have a real light hand with this so that the chalk stays in place so for this next step you're only going to quote whatever fits in between your hands so whenever it gets comfortable it's time to stop with your needle down and move your reposition your hands somewhere else and then continue going you don't want to try to quilt beyond your comfort zone because I'm going to get messy and not look very good so at home you would want to use contrasting thread when you get started that way you can really see what where you been and where you're going once you get to do this on a real quilt you want to use thread that's gonna hide and blend it in right now I'm using white and I always use rfl 50 weight and when I'm quilting on my home sewing machine all right so I'm gonna start where I first marked and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my needle down and bring it back up and then I'm gonna let that presser foot up and I have a free motion quilting foot on right now that's also called the darning foot sometimes is I'm gonna pull that bobbin thread up that will keep it from getting messy on the bottom and having thread nests issues what you don't want so when you first get started you just want to secure your threads by stitching in place a couple of times and that'll keep that nice and strong and you won't have to worry about your edges coming out now I have the fabric sitting in my lap it is not scraping against my body in any way one time we had someone come in who had been using these I couldn't figure out why the fact the chalk wasn't staying on so she tried it in class and she had blue chalk all over her boots she was a large chested woman and it was just scrape it off as she was bringing her quilt up so what we ended up having her do what she started with her quilt back here and then quilted forward and that works really well for her I feel like I can see better when it's in my lap so do what works best for you and just kind of see what works the other thing I want to do is I want to drop my feed dogs if your machine will not drop the feed dogs what you can do is you can decrease your stitch length as low as it will go to zero and I want my needle in that center position all right so I'm going to place my hands like this and I'm going to just start stitching now you control your stitch length and your stitch speed so sometimes what I'm doing this I will slow my machine down to the medium setting because then I can't let go pedal to the metal because I don't want to go super fast on this I want to have nice even stitches and because there is no stitch regulator you are your own stitch regulator so if you're listening you can hear that the machine sounds really study I'm holding the presser foot in about the same spot and I'm moving it at about the same rate so if I wanted to make it faster I could speed up my machine and then I could also need to speed up the rate that I'm moving things around otherwise my stitches are going to be very uneven so you have to find what works best for you to where you feel like you have the most control so if that means lowering your speed so that you can go nice and slow and take those curves that's fine the other thing to keep in mind is it does not matter if you are not perfectly on the curve that's March because that's line that's gonna go away no one's gonna know that I was a little bit off what I did was I followed the line in the curve and what it's important is that you have a nice curve at the end and not you know like a weird divot or something you just want to work on smooth curves and following its best you can on those lines [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so this is what it looks like all quilted out and my stitches are pretty evenly spaced and they're good distance apart you don't want to be super tiny tore if you had to break them out it would just drive you crazy or so large and it's not really going to hold together over time and you just want to kind of follow those lines and I would love to tell you that in places like this where I was off of the line that I did that on purpose I could show you how this goes away but that would be a lie you just want to kind of follow the idea of the curve be as close to it as you can to develop that muscle memory is at the end of the day this is all going to go away the chalk lines and your goal is going to be to be able to do this without the chalk overtime once you start to develop that it's like this curve it's like nowhere near where the line is but the curve looks nice it's just a nice even curve the stitches are nice and even as it goes and that's what you're aiming for and there are spots where it's not super perfect like up here there's this nice little divot where you can tell I stopped and then I didn't get a real good start again and but that's okay because if I were doing this a black or dark gray thread you would never notice that you would just see texture and I'm just using white thread once so you guys can see it at home and you guys should use a two really contrasting thread that way you can really see where you're going and where you've been and until you kind of get the hang of it so now I'm going to show you how this just goes away magically with the iron and again this only works for the ultimate white pounce powder because the other ones will heat set the color and the pigment in it and you do not want that so those you have to brush off or just or your quilt in the wash but it's all done all right I've got my ELISA you can already see it getting a lot darker because that start powder that kind of got everywhere as I went it's going away and the spots where the scenes were or you stitched over you kind of have this one a little bit of extra time on those because you know it's gotten pushed down a little bit so it takes a minute for that heat to get to all the chalk but look at the fish remove side versus before and it is all totally gone it's really awesome and this is like black as black can be fabric so you know that if it's gonna come off of this it's gonna come off of of anything really so that's really nice it's a great feature of the ultimate white so if you do a lot of dark clothes it's a great one to use the others do come off just as easy sometimes it'll just swipe them with my machiners quilting glove still on and that takes it off or you can use when the little fashioned lint brushes so when this one the repeat is in the same spot on the same side so I don't have to flip anything over some of them are more complicated than that when it comes to finding where your repeat is their registration marks and if you guys liked this video give it a thumbs up and we'll do more of them with more complicated stencils but for right now this is a really great way to start because you can practice those curves and the points all right so I'm gonna go ahead and swipe over this making sure to hold my stencil in place so I don't end up with that double vision there's something shifts a little bit on me pull it up and see you can see that all right it's probably time to bang it again back what chalkboard erasers swear oh he came off it's okay it'll be fine I can see it well enough all right so now I'm gonna bring it and line it up again try not to go over my earlier see how about you pretty good all right so jumping your bounce pad on top of your template because it will just bang the shock right off but I can see that well enough and it's showing up really well camera so we're just gonna leave it you could if that happened like try to line it back up and that will be easier with some fabrics and chalk than others for this one I'm just gonna be and we'll get through it it'll be fine all right so just like before I'm being really careful not to wipe off all the chalk on me because then I'm not gonna be able to pull on myself that's not gonna work very well so I'm gonna start by bringing my thread down back up again get my bobbin thread up and then put back down the same side and I am positioning my hands so that way I have a nice space to work with here its own place at all times and what I'm gonna do is I want to stitch out the point and when you're first getting started like come to a full stop at that point he has what you want to do is have nice sharp points rather than curves or movies at that point so coming to a full stop then I'm gonna get going to my put them again and I'm just gonna focus on getting to my next point okay so come to a full stop so knife and see my line is going to curve around and come up here so now I'm going to reposition my hand so that way that is in the center and we're start stitching and don't feel like you need to know this fast if you need to do some and steady okay so from now on I'm going to just kind of pause and do it whole stitches at the points rather than stop every single time and that will kind of you'll get to that point over time but until you feel comfortable go ahead and come to a full stop at each point stop it out here because I want to reposition my hands because I don't have good control at the edges like this so I want to make sure that I get my hands and this is so much easier to do with those machiners on because those fingertips really just direct everything and they get very easy formation just stop there [Music] took just like before I would love to tell you that when I got way off on these lines that I did that on purpose that would be a lie leaves are not perfect in nature so yours don't have to be either the idea is that it looks like a leaf that we've got a nice smooth and a point and then it moves on to the next one so what I would do is I would just order a couple of stencils these are great ones to have we're gonna put a link to them in the description box down below and you can practice those curves and practice those points and when you start to feel comfortable doing it then go ahead and give it a try without the stencils and see how good that muscle memory has developed because that's a goal is that you don't forever have to mark your stencil with a basic meander which is what these are is to get that muscle memory down get that confidence town kind of get used to working around the quilt and not backing yourself into a corner and you can always draw and stencil you know on a sketch pad too to kind of get an idea of how to work around your quilt better those are all great and awesome tips so give those things a try if you have two sewing machines that one up with your darning foot or your free motion foot and just set up a stack of these and once a day quilt a fat quarter and then you will get better at it even if you do it like two or three times a week that's going to be better than you know doing it a whole bunch on one day and then leaving it sit for a week because that repented motion is what gets you better at doing this because your body starts to remember how to move and then you're better able to execute what you've seen your mind's eye and if you're terrible at it when you start that's okay it just means you need to practice some more you're not gonna be awesome when you get started that's okay we do this as our last class and our intermediate quilting and we don't even do it on the clothes because I'm like look guys it's not gonna be good when you start it for the first time and that's okay you're gonna practice until you feel confident enough to do it on your quilt and then you're gonna go you're gonna bring out your your big quilt that you want to get this to try on on your home sewing machine or on your longer thanks so much for following along with this video tutorial if you enjoyed it please subscribe and hit the bell notification so you see all our future videos on the quilting tips and tricks if you do this and you give it a try I would love to see how it turns out just do the hashtag quilt addicts anonymous on Instagram and I'll see it and I might share it so check that out that'd be awesome we've got all the supplies you need to do this over at shop quilt addicts thumbs com just click on the link in the description below and you can go check this out and thanks so much and until next time happy quilting [Music] you

Channel: Quilt Addicts Anonymous

Views: 65,372

Rating: 4.9269662 out of 5

Keywords: free motion quilting, quilting stencils, free motion quilting for beginners, stipple meander, leaf meander, free motion quilting on your home sewing machine, quilting on your home sewing machine, Full Line Stencil, Hancy Creations, Quilt Addicts Anonymous, Quilt Addicts Anonymous tutorials, Stephanie Soebbing

Id: RwEvrm5ZDuw

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2018