How to Quilt Stippling! Quilting on a Home Machine and Longarm Frame

hello my quilting friends Lia day here with a new machine quilting tutorial today I wouldn't teach you how to quilt stippling this is one of my favorite designs it was the first design that I ever learned how to machine quilt so today I want to take you through all of the steps we're gonna first practice on a little practice sandwich then quilt a real quilt on a home sewing machine and then I'm gonna switch out and quilt on the long arm and show you how this design stippling works in all of these different applications so let's jump on the machine and begin learning how to quilt stippling together so let's begin by just going over the rules of the design stippling has a very simple rule and that is stitch a wiggly line that doesn't cross itself so the very simplest and easiest way you can interpret this is as a set of wiggly u shapes so you just wiggle create a curve then immediately go into another curve just keep it nice and smooth so that's really the simplest way that you can stitch stippling honestly I covered an entire quilt with exactly this design when I was first getting started but the key to making it look like meandering like a legally design is to start making it more complex and you do that by adding Ben sokurah bent to the left and now pull out this way and then curve in so it's really just a matter of stitching curving shapes and trying not to work yourself into a corner where you end up having a stitch either the lines closer together you'd have to cross so let's talk about some of the shapes that you can stitch and stippling and you want to think about this like learning how to write in cursive if you practice these shapes then it'll be just exactly like writing your name you know your name is a combination of different shapes you know if we write the word quilting in cursive and you know the cube and the you connect together in that unique way so I'm gonna rotate this around I always like stitching in rows like this right across my quilting space so I like to quote from left to right that's just what feels most comfortable for me so play around with that and see what those most comfortable for you so one of the sheeps I like this ditch and stippling kind of like call it the why or peace sign you just form that wiggle shape and then you immediately stitch another one right next to it then wiggle up in that space that you've left and Stitch another one you could also think it's kind of like a heart shape and you see how it's mirrored on both sides of mirror stitching down stitch that same shape again but you see I have this gap here and I want to nest these two rows together so this is where you can start thinking about all right I want to make this more complex how do I do that very simple way of doing that is just wiggle down and into that space curve out and then maybe going to another little bird shape just like that so repeating different sheets a really good idea here's what I call the clock so it's like a little curve and then you kind of fall you curl around that little shape here I've got just this a little bit of space so I'm just gonna curl in and then basically echoquote my way all the way out and that'll form the next row filling in this little square so now I'm gonna rotate again and I do like to rotate my quilt just exactly this much even when I'm working on something bigger another thing you can keep in mind is that whatever your boundary line is whether it's a marked line like mine or it's your stitching in the ditch lines you can always connect with that and travel stitch down and that's a ok so let's try that cloth shape again now going in a different direction you stitch a little curve and then stitch down and kind of like you're almost spiraling around it you're kind of surrounding it with a nice long curving shape I even named whenever you just stitch these long curving shapes I call that alien fingers so that's another way of the design you could just take stippling and stitch much longer shapes and you'll end up with an entirely different effect so that's enough practice as you can see there's lots of different ways you can quilt this design you can start with those really simple wiggly u shapes that's a great place to start and then as you make it more complex just add bends and Wiggles and interconnect your rows together so it forms the design now let's jump on a real quilt so we can get more practice quilting stippling so I'm getting started on this baby quilt and I forgot to go over the very beginning you always want to pull up your thread tails to the surface so I'm gonna drop my needle down bring it all the way back up again to the point where the needle is starting to drop back down again then I give that top thread a tug and it pulls up a loop that loop is your bobbin so bring that up to the surface so that way that back thread that bobbin thread doesn't make a mess on the back of your quilt and do that every single time I start stitching and I keep those thread tails about three to four inches long so that way I can tie them off and bury them in the middle layer of the quilt securely when I'm done okay so now I'm right here in the corner and I want to fill this entire space in with stippling and I want to stitch on a half inch scale so we haven't talked about this yet scale is the distance between your lines of quilting so basically it's kind of a rough estimate from this line to this line that's a little bit bigger than a half of an inch but I'm going to aim to keep that distance consistent throughout the square so I'm going to form that design we're gonna just form some simple Wiggly use shapes and then now maybe I'll kind of bend it around just to make it a little bit more interesting sometimes when you're first getting started just kind of have to get the feel for your quilt how quickly you can move it and please don't feel like you have to go fast watch you can go slow here I'm running my main machine slowly it's going up and down very slowly so I'm moving my hands slowly too I really like using quilting gloves like I'm wearing because it helps me grip the quilt and move it really smoothly and evenly no matter what speed I'm going but you might find that you naturally want to speed up I mean it's a design that especially when you're stitching really simple Wiggly use shapes or these repetitive piece signs these Y shapes you know you can put your foot down and want to go faster so what you want to do is just make sure that you have some space to stitch in to sew shift things around you know move the quilt so you can see where you're stitching and don't get confused with in the straight lines on this quilt I have basted it using water-soluble thread here and that's what those lines are so that's just holding the layers of the quilt together securely so I don't have to have pins all over it okay so now I have nice big space I can put my foot down and think about that design stitching curving wiggling shapes but don't cross them over and with that in mind I can kind of speed up you can see how much faster I'm running the machine and how much faster I'm moving the quilt around to so you can see I did form more or less repetitive set of shapes here and that's okay I don't think anyone's gonna look at your quilt closely enough to go oh wow you're just repeating yourself over and over again you know no one will really be able to tell because now we're gonna go and stitch a row another row below this and we're gonna lock the two together so really it's gonna look like a totally freeform random design and part of that comes in of making sure that you're stitching a different shape so here I'm gonna wiggle up with just a single curve come back down and maybe a wiggle something nice and long right around here you kind of just have to make it up but one thing that can get in your way is the front of the machine also the quilt itself and I find sometimes I just need to do a little rotation be able to see what I'm doing and then I couldn't more easily lock these two rows together so here in this case I stitched a row from left to right and then I'm now rotating the quilt so I can stitch straight down towards myself so this is a very common way that I rotate my quilt so I can see better it was just a 90 degree turn so it wasn't a big deal I didn't have to do a lot of shifting or bunching of the quilt on the machine you know it's just able to swing it around and get back to quilting but that's the thing about quilting on a home sewing machine you are going to continually need to shift and manipulate the quilt so that way it can move really easily some carrom for me the design and this is just kind of my own random pattern but I have a little gap here I want to make sure I don't forget about that so I'm going to stitch it down and into that area swing around but not too far I don't want to go in and cross my lines of quote saying now sneak back out of there so that is it for quilting on a home machine now let's take this design and learn how to stitch stippling using the long arm so here is my long arm this is the grace Kunik 14-plus and I have it here on the continuum frame so this is an entirely different style of quilting from homeless sheen quilting where instead of moving the quilt underneath the needle I'm gonna be moving the machine so let's get back to stippling and see how this works on the long arm so let's get started here I've been getting a little bit of practice going because I wanted to make sure I could stitch this design fairly good I'm still just learning how to quote on this machine so let's begin with some wiggling shapes I'm just whittling back away from myself and then wiggling towards myself I'm trying to move the machine as evenly as I can and not jerk it around it does feel very different because of course I'm able to move the machine and I don't have to stop and reposition my quilt or do anything like that I'm just focusing on forming that design and really the biggest key here is just making sure that the spacing stays even so I'm trying to make sure that the lines roughly stay about a half of an inch apart and I think that's really the ultimate key that's really what makes it look good so now let's try some of those peace signs or rabbit ears I'm gonna loop back and I'm gonna do a loop little curve there now I'm going to come towards me and do two little curves just like that it's really nice to play with repetitive shapes like this because of course moving the machine side-to-side is really easy and you can just work down the length of your quilt or your fabric and just repeat the same shape over and over again you get a lot of good practice repetition I think is the key no matter which machine you're stitching on no matter what style of quilting you're doing repetition is really the key that's going to teach you how to put the design and memorize those shapes and how they go together and also you know how it's going to work on your quilt how it's going to actually fit and fill around your foot blocks or in your sashing or borders anything like that so now I'm trying out a totally freeform random stippling you can see I form the shapes nice and smooth every once in a while I'll jerk a little bit and that's just me getting used to moving the machine and trying to move it smoothly the nice thing is I hope you can see that the stitches remain completely consistent and that is something called a stitch regulator and this is something I only have on my long arm I don't have this on my whole machine at all but basically what it does is it looks at the speed that I'm moving the machine and it helps to control how fast the needle is going out up and down based on how fast I'm moving the machine and it will increase the speed of the needle moving down if I move the Machine faster so that way the stitches stay roughly consistent and you can actually set the length that you want on the machine so here I've set 16 stitches per inch I like a really nice tight stitch length so this is 16 stitches per inch and you can see it maintains it even when I stitch fast even when I kind of let the Machine go a little bit then it still maintains those nice consistent stitches and that's really nice I got to say I have I have never used a stitch regulator on a home machine mostly because I felt like it really is something that you can learn through practice and trial and error you can learn how to balance the speed of your machine with the movement of your hands but stitching on the long arm it just feels very easy and you know there's a lot less to worry about all I have to worry about really here is forming that design keeping the lines consistently spaced and moving the long arm nice and smooth and evenly so that's it for this video I hope you learned a lot quilting stippling with me today it doesn't matter what type of machine you're quilting on whether it's a home sewing machine or on a long arm that rules the design remain the same stitch a wiggly line that doesn't cross itself you know it's just a matter practicing those simple shapes and you'll get the hang of this design now if you'd like to learn more about the long arm on quilting on it is the grace unique 14 plus and you can learn more about it Leigha DICOM slash grace if you enjoyed this video please like it share it with your friends and subscribe to my channel on youtube so you don't miss the next video coming out soon until next time let's go quilt

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 64,071

Rating: 4.9315066 out of 5

Keywords: machine quilting, machine quilting stippling, quilting stippling, stippling quilting design, free motion quilting, quilting tutorial, quilting for beginners, quilting stippling tutorial, quilting stippling stitch, free motion quilting stippling, quilting stippling techniques, machine quilting stippling patterns, long arm quilting stippling, longarm quilting, beginner longarm quilting, Leah Day, Grace Qnique, quilting stippling beginners, ultimate machine quilting tutorial

Id: fN1j8JEEQxM

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2018