How To Free Motion Quilt Like A Pro On Your Sewing Machine

I am definitely not perfect when it comes to free motion quilting but I have been practicing a lot more lately through all of the practice I have been doing I have discovered a few tips that have improved each of my freemotion projects a little bit each time so since I have found all of these little tips really helpful I'm going to share them with you today my first tip is to set up for success I type of person who really likes to just jump right into a project I like to get started I don't like to fuss with all of the extras and sometimes that is fine but sometimes it really doesn't help me get a project finish the way I would like so for me when I decide I'm going to free motion and practice doing a quiltfree motion I make sure I do a few things to set up for success and while they're not fun sometimes it is important so the first thing I always do is clean out my machine I don't do this as often as I should and it's actually great that I've been practicing free motion quilting because I have it in my mind that to do this well I need my machine to be running well so I always clean it out the next thing I always do I honestly am not great at either and I should be doing this more often but I always change my needle I I put a new needle in my machine and I feel like that really helps to make sure that the needle is nice and sharp and I get nice even Stitches the next thing I do is I fill up my bobin with whatever thread I am going to be using on the project that I am working on this is because when I get in a flow and get things moving really well I don't want to have to stop and fill up a bobin I feel like that kind of gets me out of a Groove that I'm in so being able to pop a new bobin in right away I find to be very helpful the next few things I do to set up for a success is to remember to lower the feed dogs on the machine I also make sure that I have the correct foot for my machine put in so it's a freemotion quilting foot that I have and then I also lower the speed on my machine I feel like I need to sew a little bit slower than I normally do when I freemotion quilt to get some nice even stitches so lowering the speed of the machine really helps me stay consistent the next thing I highly recommend is getting some gloves with grips on them so I have two different pairs I'm going to show you the first one I started with these are called grab ruse and while they worked really nice they were a little bit baggy on my hands and they did not feel comfortable these are gloves that are meant for free motion quilting for quilting on a domestic uh and they are a quilty notion so bear with me here the pair that I really really love are these gorilla grip tracks these fit my hand so much better they feel much more comfortable on and they are actually from a hardware store so not really meant for freemotion quilting but I feel like they work a lot better for me they're covered in grips rather than the grabar that just have grips on the fingertips now does that mean these are the best ones that they'll work best for you I honestly don't know we're all going to like different things I just wanted to show these to you to suggest if you're not liking the gloves that you have that are designed for freemotion quilting maybe try something else now another thing I like to point out about these gloves so not only do they fit me a lot better but they also come in a lot of different sizes so I feel like if you are a person who has larger hand you might be able to find a pair at a hardware store that fit you better now that everything is all set up I want to show you the project I'm going to be working on for this video so here's my project and do you notice anything about it aside from it being absolutely adorable it really just brings me to my second tip and that is to choose the right project to freemotion quilton that matches your ability so this is pretty small it's a table runner or a long wall hanging style quilt and it is perfect for me to work on and improve my skills for free motion quilting because it is smaller and it kind of builds my confidence more too to stay within my comfort and ability when I'm free motion quilting so you may have also noticed something else on this project and that is that there are pins on it and instead of of using spray based which you may have seen me use a lot in the past I choose to pin based now when I'm fre motion quilting so that brings me to my next tip here and that is to pin base if you have noticed that your needle gets really gummed up if you are freemotion quilting a quilt that you have spray based so what I started to notice was that a lot of the skip stick stitches I was getting and a lot of the um kind of uneven stitches looked like they were coming because of my needle getting really sticky from the spray base that I use so once I started going back to pin basting when I'm freemotion quilting things went a lot more smoother for me so maybe try pin basting your next project that you want a free motion quilt on if you've maybe been spray basting in the past now my four fourth tip for you today is to practice on a small scrap of fabric that you have set up just like you do the projects you're going to work on so I have a backing I have batting and I have the top layer of fabric set it up and just practice a little bit before you jump in on your project and I suggest doing this because you probably don't freemotion quilt every single day at least I don't if you do then you may not need to to do this but I feel like it's really easy to get out of the feeling that you get when you freemotion quilt the movement the speed all of those things are kind of ingrained in you when you start doing it but when you're out of practice for a little bit that feeling kind of gets lost so practice a little bit get comfortable before you jump into your project so a few things that I noticed when I was practicing was that one I was sitting way too far away from the machine to where I felt comfortable but it felt kind of awkward to think about moving so I got to a stopping point where I knew I had to take out a needle anyway and then I moved forward a little bit so I'm going to see if that position feels better for me I'm also looking to see what direction I'm going because I already forgot all right so I'm happy with how everything looks so I'm going to go ahead and get started on my actual quilt all right so my last tip for you today was the hardest for me to figure out and that was moving my hands while I am freemotion quilting I feel like that's kind of the hardest thing to figure out because it's also hard to explain I'm going to try my best to explain it to you and hopefully you find it really really helpful it has been really hard for me to figure out how to get comfortable and where to keep my hands when I'm freemotion quilting I'll get into a position where my hand's getting too close to the needle or it feels like it's getting too far away to control the quilt and I just kind of fumble getting it back into a good place and then my stitches get all wonky things get messed up all of that just unravels and it's so frustrating because I could have been in a really good flow I'm building my confidence and then all of a sudden my hands fumble everywhere and things get messed up and it can be really discouraging so I'm going to try to explain to you what I do the best I can and hopefully it helps you out so I'm stopped right now and I see a needle coming up so I'm going to go ahead and get that out it's not really a needle pin safety pin you know what I mean though right all right so I'm going to get going here and I'm going to kind of talk about where I have my hands so I have them on either side of the needle area that's where it feels really comfortable for me it might end up feeling comfortable for you some in other some other position and that's okay I'm more going to talk about when I feel comfortable moving my hands here so I'm going to get started going and if I feel like I need to move one of my hands like I'm coming up on this one I can move this one freely because the hand on the other side was holding the quilt in place for me that's the hand that had all of the forse on the quilt on it so this hand's just kind of a guide now this hand is a free hand and the other hand is holding more of the quilt and guiding it so I really base my hand movements on the hand that is holding the quilt firm the most so I'm going to show you again and it's really hard to to really show the movement it's kind of a feeling that I feel like you're going to get the more you practice so my hand closest to the throat of the machine has the strongest grip on the quilt right now now the hand farther away has the strongest get the Str hand towards throat so whatever hand has the strongest grip you'll be able to move the other hand if needed and hopefully not have too much movement in your quilt now I'm try I'm really exaggerating the movements of my hands right now I usually don't pick them up and move them that heavily it's usually just a few fingers move in but I'm trying to show you how because the other hand has more of a grip on the quilt you can kind of move your hand that you need to pretty easily without fumbling anything so hopefully you understood what I was saying with how I move my hands around now I really found this so helpful when it kind of clicked in my head and I hope I was able to explain it to help you in some way when I first started freemotion quilting my hands were just a fumbling mess everywhere I would try to move boast at the same time because I would kind of panic and and be getting too close to the needle or too far away and everything would just turn into a mess because nothing was really holding the quilt in place so hopefully I helped you out a little bit with this tip and all of the others now if you really enjoy freemotion quilting and have some good tips to add I would love to hear from you in the comments below if you have any questions or have gotten started on freemotion quilting I can try to answer those as well thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music] bye

Channel: Sew Be It Quilts

Views: 19,951

Keywords: free motion quilting, machine quilting, how to free motion quilt, free motion quilting tips, how do i free motion quilt, machine quilting on home machine, free motion quilting on home machine, free motion quilt tutorial, free motion quilting for beginners, free motion quilting beginner tutorial 1, free motion quilting on domestic sewing machine, machine quilting free motion

Id: YD6HsXodyVA

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023