How to Free Motion Quilt for Beginners on a Regular Machine! What You Need, Basting, & Machine Setup

i get asked about free motion quilting maybe more than anything else and so i have put together a couple of videos for you guys that's going to help you go from i've never free motion quilted before or finished a quilt all the way up to ready to experiment with feathers and rulers and have a little bit more fun everyone even the most advanced award-winning quilters start out as a complete beginner so you are an excellent company and i know that you guys can do this so let's jump in right away with exactly what you need to get started so the first thing you're going to need is a needle and i always recommend changing out your needle before you start free motion quilting this needle has to do a lot of work when you're piecing your needle is going through two layers of fabric sometimes more to seam but generally just two layers of thin fabric when you're quilting your needle has to penetrate not only the two layers of fabric but also the batting it's also going to be being pulled and pushed in multiple different directions and so you need a needle that can accommodate that now i use schmetz quilting needles they have a tiny pink line on the kind of shaft of the needle that tells you that it is a quilting needle and then the other band is just the size of the needle so i have universals that also have that green band and you can download a free schmatt's needle guide that tells you all of the colors and the bands and what they all mean so that if you have unidentified needles lying around you will know what type they are which is super handy now what makes this a quilting needle as opposed to any other type of needle a top stitch needle or a micro text needle is that a quilting needle has a tapered shaft and a slightly ballpoint tip and that means that it's going to penetrate all those layers without causing any holes and it's going to help you reduce those skipped stitches that you might get where the needle goes down and then it comes back up but the threads don't really connect so you have some longer stitches and if you are having that problem in your piecing or your quilting then you might want to look at your needle and change that out and see if that helps the process now i want to take a moment and contrast this needle with a long arm needle this is a needle from my long arm and you can see just scale wise how much bigger it is and just kind of chunkier it is longer machines are they're just a more industrial machine they go faster they produce a lot more friction they make bigger holes in your fabric and it's just overall like a higher rate of speed of work and that leads us into our discussion of what you will need next which is thread there are two main classes of thread that are available to you there is cotton thread like orophil which is what i use for all of my domestic work piecing quilting i always turn to orophel it is for a cotton a fairly low lint thread and it is pretty strong and comes in a lot of colors so it's kind of the line that i have chosen as my favorite but i do not use orville or any cotton in my long arm machine and it is simply because of that high rate of speed i have found that when i use cotton in my long arm it produces a large amount of lint for my machine and long arms can be a little bit more finicky um i don't think they are deserving of the as big of a bad wrap as they sometimes get but when it comes to my long arm i use this thread which is a polyester thread and it is the same weight as orifil thread but they are both 50 weight threads but the polyester thread doesn't produce as much lint there is still a little bit of lint so polyester thread is synthetic it is not a natural material but the advantage that it has is that it has long fibers that can be spun together into a thread which means that it does not produce as much lint as a cotton thread and it is much stronger than a cotton thread and so it can hold up to the high speed of a long arm so why does cotton thread produce so much lint now i don't know how many of you grew up in the south or have ever seen cotton growing or held raw cotton in your hands but before i was a quilter i was a hand spinner i worked with wool and cotton to make yarn to knit and weave with so i've held a lot of cotton in my hands and this batting actually is made of cotton this is warm and natural it's just a 100 cotton batting and if you you can do this at home if you kind of just grab at the very edge of your batting and pull some fibers out these are cotton fibers and this is the length that they are when they grow this is as long as they will ever get and so you can imagine these very fine short fibers when they are spun into thread the overlap between one fiber and the next fiber is not very long so that the friction created by a sewing machine can kind of wear those fibers away from each other and some fibers are going to come off come out of that thread and end up in your machine that is lint it is extra cotton fibers being pulled out of your thread that's why your lint in your machine is kind of rainbow colored like if you've been sewing with blue thread for a really long time and you clean out your machine the lint is blue right it's it's your thread a polyester thread is not going to have that problem because it is basically extruded melted plastic so they can make the fibers like the the length of the fiber you saw the cotton was minuscule they can make these miles and miles long and so each thread the fiber length of each piece of polyester in your thread is it could be a thousand yards long and so there's not that wear of the tip of each fiber uh like there isn't a cotton so that's why polyester thread produces less lint than a cotton thread now were these the only threads available to you absolutely not there are a rainbow wide variety of materials and colors and threads out there for you to experiment with so beyond what your thread is actually made out of there's also the size of thread to consider now these are both 50 weight threads but threads come in all different kinds of sizes you may like the look of a 40 weight thread or 30 weight thread which are going to be just slightly heavier thicker than a 50 weight thread it goes all the way down to this is a 12 weight thread and it's pretty chunky you can even use a size 8 thread which is more like a pearl cotton i use size 12 and size 8 mainly for hand quilting because they are significantly thicker but you can certainly experiment using 12 weight thread in your sewing machine you might have fantastic results on the other end of the spectrum there are also finer threads the thread that i use in the bobbin of my long arm is a 60 weight thread and it goes all the way down to 100 weight thread so there is a thread out there for whatever you want to accomplish another absolute must-have before you begin free motion quilting is the right foot now i have three feet here in front of me two of them are for my genome and this one is for my jukie these are hopping feet in your manual you might hear this referred to as a darning foot but they all have a few things in common and one is this spring so that the foot can kind of gently hop over the surface of your quilt then they have a kind of area for your needle to go down into now they all may look a little bit different this one from ijuki has a complete ring where my needle goes through this one for my genome has just kind of like an open three-sided area for my needle to go through and this one has kind of a plastic oblong oval type shape they will all work so if you have one that came with your machine then definitely use that if your machine did not come with one then there are after-market parts available for most machines you will need to look at your machine and your machine's manual to see what type you need but when you get it then install it make sure it's on there nice and tight and then use the hand crank on your machine to lower and raise your needle a couple of times to make sure that your needle is not going to touch any part of your hopping foot that's just a good thing to do anytime you install a new foot on your machine because breaking a needle is terrifying and just take a second to make sure your needle's not going to do that and surprise you one final thing i want to say about hopping feet is in the next video i'm going to go a little bit deeper into some more advanced free motion quilting but this is not for rulers see how thin this ring is that kind of surrounds where your needle goes a ruler foot is much thicker you can see that the base for my ruler foot is significantly thicker it's it's probably five or six times thicker than the hopping foot base and that is really important when you're working with rulers if you plan to work with rulers at some point in the future and you're deciding between a hopping foot with a flat base like this or a ruler foot base you can use a ruler foot base all the time for free motion quilting so if you think that ruler quilting might be in your future then go ahead and get the ruler foot it is a little bit harder to see the base of your needle when you're free motion quilting but it's not that difficult and if you can save yourself some money these hopping feet are not cheap if you have to buy them so uh just buy one instead of buying two so these next two items are more in the nice to have category but they are very nice to have so the first one is the supreme slider and this is a kind of very smooth low friction kind of tacky mat that will stick to your machine this hole goes right under where the needle is and it just creates a really smooth surface for you to slide your fabric over as you quilt they come in two sizes i believe or at least they did when i bought mine this is the queen size which is a little bit bigger and there's also a standard size which is a little bit smaller i recommend getting the biggest one that will fit on your machine and you can trim them down a little bit now these do last for a really long time and if you find that yours is a little less tacky than it used to be and these aren't sticky it's more of like a static cling but if you find that yours isn't um sticking to your machine as well as it did when you first got it you can take a baby wipe and just wipe off the pink side and let it dry and it will like re-magic itself i have had this one for years now and it's still in great shape i have no plans to replace it so this is something that you can buy and use for a very long time this next item is the machinickers gloves this is the brand that i happen to have but there are other brands out there i think angela walters makes a brand um that leaves a few of your fingers free so you can still use your phone um there's several brands out there what you're really looking for in these gloves is they're a really fine glove but the fingers have almost like a little bit of like a rubberized coating on them kind of like a gardening glove if you've ever used one to pull weeds it has that kind of like rubberized kind of grippy um feel to it and this has it just on the fingers so that when you have fabric uh in front of you when you are sewing you can use that kind of grip to push and pull the fabric instead of just using your hand strength you're going to be doing this for quite a while and your hands will be really fatigued if you're just relying on your hand and finger strength to grip your fabric as you move through the machine i kind of held off using gloves when i first started quilting and when i finally tried a pair i realized what i was really missing out on if i had to choose between the supreme slider and the gloves i would buy the gloves first they are much cheaper than the supreme slider i think they're around ten dollars for these gloves you want to make sure that you get the right size of them because if they're kind of baggy they're a little bit harder to use effectively now i got this pair free as like a giveaway i think in a quilty box and they're a size medium large and you can see on the little hand thing that my hands are very tiny they're really more in the extra small category so that's the size that i usually buy when i'm buying them for myself a few more nice to have items are an extension table for your machine if you have one or even better if you have one of those tables where you can drop your machine down into so you have like a nice flat surface neither of those are essential they're nice to have um i would say a must-have is a pretty decently sized table that is kind of cleared off a dining room table is like ideal for this you want to set your machine up on the left side of your table so that the bulk of your quilt can kind of expand to fill the side away from your machine and just having that large table to support your quilt will really help take the tension and weight off of your hands and shoulders when you're quilting so the bigger the table you have the easier time you'll have when i am free motion quilting a large project on a domestic machine i'll actually clear off my cutting table which is much larger than the space i have right here and quilt over there the final thing i want to suggest to you is to get a notebook and a pen and just start doodling the designs i keep my ipad or a notebook with me pretty much at all times so that i can draw out little ideas that i have or just practice those kind of doodling exercises will really help you build the mental muscle memory of these designs and i do want to stress to use a pen not a pencil a pencil is it's really tempting to just kind of erase your mistakes but building the skill of learning how to get yourself out of trouble spots is a skill that will serve you well when you are quilting um you do not want to be stopping and unpicking a few inches of quilting every time you kind of get yourself into a jam so use a pen now when you're drawing and you will learn that skill in kind of a low stress environment drawing so that when you do move to your machine and start stitching you already know how to get yourself out of a jam the final thing we need is a basted quilt sandwich so let's go over how to baste a quilt so let's talk about basting your quilt sandwich for free motion success now basting just means temporarily holding the three layers of your quilt sandwich together so that they move together as a unit while you are quilting instead of shifting against each other and that shifting is what can cause kind of pleats or bumps or tucks in your quilt top or your quilt back and we do want to avoid those because they do create spots that might wear a little more differently than the rest of your quilt and that differential wear could lead to holes or kind of problems in the long term life of your quilt so we can get it all smooth during the basting process then it'll make your free motion quilting life a lot easier i'm working with a small sample here just so that it kind of fits in the view of my camera so i have this little square of yellow that represents my top and i have my backing and batting cut larger than my top my batting is a couple inches all the way around if you were doing a decent sized quilt i would say your batting needs to be at least two three four inches on each side bigger than your quilt your backing needs to be even bigger than your batting i like to have at least four or five inches on each side for my backing fabric not only does it give me a little bit of wiggle room while i'm basting it also helps while you're quilting it kind of gives you something to hold on to especially as you're doing those tricky little edges of your quilt i'm going to show you my favorite method for basting and it uses these little slots of wood now these are kind of miniature versions when i'm doing an actual quilt i use these kind of 1x2 sections of lumber from the hardware store they're pretty cheap they come pre-painted even so they're a fairly smooth surface and i know some people use pool noodles but i kind of like the rigid stability of a piece of wood to help me um keep everything nice and straight so as always we are going to start with our backing and it needs to be face down because we want the right side of the backing to be on the outside of the quilt so i'm going to grab one of my little pieces of wood here and i'm going to place it kind of near the edge i'm going to grab my little frog tape here and i'm just going to tape the fabric to my piece of wood just a piece of tape every couple inches will do the job once it's taped we can just roll the backing up just making sure that it's nice and smooth as we roll once we have that set we are going to repeat the same process with our batting so i'm going to do the same thing with my batting and i found that batting doesn't always need as much tape as a as a piece of fabric it kind of likes to stick to itself and now it's time to do the top and we're just gonna roll that up now if you have seam lines in your top which i'm guessing you do if it's a piece top then you can check those seam lines to make sure that you're rolling this straight if you have a seam line that starts to not be quite parallel to the piece of wood then you can unroll it and just adjust to make sure you're keeping even tension as you roll and now we have all three of our layers prepared for basting i am going to start by moving the backing stick kind of closest to me and i am going to unroll it so that i have kind of a arms width of distance to work with obviously i'm doing it in small scale here but if i was working on a full quilt at a table i would probably have it from here to about the back of my board so that i can easily reach all the things that are unrolled once i have my backing laid out i'm going to take my batting stick and i'm going to center it side to side on my backing so once i have this positioned so that i have a nice usable amount of distance between the bottom of my batting and the edge of my backing we're going to just roll it away kind of roll it back up so that we can access this area to use our spray base now i am using spray based i am in a well ventilated room with a fan on and my windows open i really recommend that you read all the warnings on this and use this in as well a ventilated space as you can outside if possible but take some precautions because this is kind of nasty stuff you don't want to breed this in i'm doing this on a small scale kind of in this room just for the camera but this is one of those do as i say not as i do on camera and i'm just going to spray a little bit on this exposed backing and now i can unroll my batting and smooth it down as i go and now my batting is attached to my backing now i can take my quilt top and do the same thing i'm going to center it on my batting and leave that little bit of space however much i calculated when i was cutting my batting and i'm going to do the same thing i'm going to roll it away and then kind of spray my batting and now i can roll my top obviously this is very small if i was working with full quilt i would be rolling it a little bit further now if you would rather use safety pins than a spray based then this is where you would get to before you would start putting your safety pins in so you would layer all three of your layers and then you could safety pin this area that's nice and flat and then safety pin or spray you're going to take this whole thing and just pull it towards yourself and if you're working on a table it can fall into your lap you just want the already kind of basted portion to be outside of your working area so that you can work on another new section and we're just going to repeat this i'm going to unroll kind of the next working section of my batting my backing spray unroll my backing onto it [Applause] and then my top now i would keep progressing obviously i only had two passes here because this is a small little sample but unroll and progress as many times as you need to and this will help keep all three of your layers really nice and flat allow you to baste at a table don't save your back this is how i always basted my quilt when i was quilting out of domestic and needed to baste my quilts so that's it once you get to the end you can kind of gently peel the sticks off with their little pieces of tape and now you have a cool sandwich that is nicely basted and ready to quilt so now that our quilt sandwich is all basted it is time to sit down at our machine and get our machine ready for free motion quilting now your machine is probably set up for piecing mine is right now and that means that the machine is doing part of the work it is helping move our fabric through the needle area so that our stitch length is consistent and just kind of overall our piecing is great but when we're free mushroom quilting we want to be in charge of the movement of our quilt sandwich so we need to change some settings on our machine to make that all work so the first thing i'm going to do is remove my foot and the needle get my big old crazy screwdriver out this is a great time to give your machine a little bit of a quick clean if it's been a while so i'm going to open it up and just clean it out really quickly i've also removed my seam guide if you do have one installed then you definitely want to remove that so that your fabric can move really smoothly under your needle next we can add our hopping foot and it may look funny but it goes on just like any other machine foot that you might have so swap out your regular foot for your hopping foot or your free motion quilting foot and then add your fresh quilting needle now we need to take care of these feed dogs that are sticking up these are what draw your fabric through your machine when you are piecing and we want to be in charge so i'm going to drop these on my machine this is how i lower my feed dogs this is the up feed dog position and i'm going to switch this lever so that the arrow is pointing to where the feed dogs are lower than the kind of surface area of the machine my genome has a very similar button but it is located on the side of the machine you can see it has the same kind of three triangles with the lines that show them kind of above and below the surface of the needle plate now most machines do have the option of dropping the feed dogs but if yours does not then set your stitch length as close to zero if not at zero as you possibly can and that will change the motion of the feed dogs so if you have a really long stitch those feed dogs are moving in a long path to move that fabric the whole length of that stitch if you set your stitch length to almost zero then they're really going to be moving just kind of up and down and that will allow you to have more control over the fabric the other thing you can do if you cannot drop your feed dogs is set your stitch length low and then cover the area with your supreme slider i have mine installed and you can see just how little of the feed dogs are actually exposed in that very small hole that the supreme slider has so your feed dogs may bump up against your supreme slider but they won't be impacting your fabric and you'll have a nice smooth surface to move your quilt sandwich across so now we have all of our supplies our machine is set up our quilt is basted and we are ready to go in the next video i'm going to show you how to do attention test correct any tension problems and show you my three kind of skill builder free motion quilting designs that are easy to do for a beginner but will help you really grow and learn and experiment in the future so i hope you join me and if you have any questions about free motion quilting then definitely leave it in the comments below if you want a little preview of my favorite free motion quilting designs i will put my playlist of all over designs up in the corner and although i do these all on a long arm they are absolutely doable on a domestic machine and there are some tips for domestic quilting up in those videos i hope you guys join me next time and we will start actually stitching out our sandwiches i hope you guys have a lovely week happy quilting bye

Channel: Tiny Orchard Quilts

Views: 441,707

Keywords: quilting, quilt how to, quilt, tiny orchard quilts, quilting tutorial, how to make a quilt, free motion quilting foot, free motion quilting supplies, free motion quilting on home machine, free motion quilting on home machine for beginners, free motion quilt tutorials, free motion quilt tutorial, how to baste a quilt, how to quilt a quilt, how to quilt a quilt on a regular sewing machine, free motion quilting for beginners

Id: Qdqhh6QuFrY

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020