Quilting a large Quilt on a Domestic Machine using templates

hi I'm Leone West from West Italy design and I'm going to just show you a few tips on quilting on a large quilt on a domestic machine I'm lucky I have a wide throat throat on my machine but I have quilted king-size quilts on four-inch throated machines it's a matter of learning how to move and manipulate fabric one of the important things to remember is we can only ever quit what fits under our hand space whether it is with rules and templates or you are quilting free motion you can still only move so much fabric at a time you cannot quote a whole quilt in one movement so that's one of the important things having your machine set up at the correct height so you're not sitting way too low when you are quoting if you're sitting down low I'll just drop this chair for you if I'm sitting down like this my arms are too low and then when I go to quilt I had more trouble pushing my quilt through because it's like pushing fabric up a hill so get your table to the correct height have your chair at the correct height have everything ready to go before you start I have a so steady table under on my machine my machine is placed as far right as I can on my table and I have my quilt bunched around this block is nice and flat and pressed the block next to it which we're not going to call today this block is not flat and pressed it's just because this has been folded up for a while sitting in a cupboard and make sure it's flat if it's flat everything moves better set your machine up did your tension correct have a sample piece to court on do a practice test run of what your quilting stitch is this machine Bill's going to just follow over to where my finger is here it has a lock button on it when I press that lock button my stitch can't be changed so if I bought these while I'm quilting which does sometimes have when you move your fabric it can't change on this machine so if you have that feature on your machine it is fantastic because you cannot bump that and suddenly be working in a zigzag because you bumped up with the quilt my machine is also set on an angle to my table this way my throat space is larger than if I was sitting straight in here I find that my quilt is being moved from around here and not fighting everything in underneath here all the time have your quilt so that your fabric is sitting moving loosely you can bring the fabric over your hand if you wish so I could have that up there and my hand goes under here it's not going to impede my quilting paddle the quilt pull the quilt around your machine so it's not catching on anything the front part we don't have anything here to catch it so I just pick it up so it's not sitting down under my legs and it just sits on here when I'm courting a large quilt it will be basted you can spray baste it pin-based it you can have it machine basted by a long arm quilter which is great because they based it beautifully and everything stays together but you're still doing the quilting I'm just bringing my threads up in here I'm going to quilt a heart in this section here so my template has stable tape on both sides of this template because I'm going to be flipping the template over to do the opposite side of the heart we have been teaching for three years to learn to move your February don't moving the template in one direction don't try and turn it if you try and turn it you will end up fighting constantly because you don't want to be turning that fabric at the moment if you have a look here I'm doing this deliberately I've allowed my fabric to group the front of the table that's because I didn't pick it up and poured at the front now when I pull it at the front my fabric will move much freer because there is nothing gripping it remember when we're doing a large quilt they're going I cannot stress how often I excited we need to be able to move it freely if you are quilting and you find it grab something stop quilting immediately I'm just turning this template over and we're going to do the other side of this heart stop quilting as soon as you feel it grip because you're just going to fight it you don't need to fight it stable tape actually helps there attempt the fabric move much freer than if it didn't have stable tape on it because this table tape is gripping onto that fabric if you want you can use gloves I'm not turning my fabric I'm only moving the template you can use gloves if you like using gloves I actually don't like gloves so I don't wear them but if I have trouble with my movement of my fabric for whatever reason I can put stable tape on my fingertips and I will just grab a piece of stable tape cut a piece off so I'm just going to cut a piece off about an inch and a half or so long and I can put stable tape on the tips of my fingers the fingers that I know are the ones that do the most fabric movement so my fingers are now being held to my fabric as well as my template being helped to the fabric and I'm just going to come and do the other side come back down to the center remember we're quilting over seems we're quilting over lots of different things in here just got a thread caught up there which I'll just get rid of it's one of the things we should try and make sure we don't have we're going to come and do the other side so as long as that portion of my fabric moves freely I can quilt in my block now whether you find this a hard task to move fabric which a lot of people do sometimes it is easier to do by guided most of the time which is do quilters should go blocks I do that because I like the process of quilting and when I'm working on a small area fabric it is easier to manipulate than a large quilt but that's the free motion or rule work so we're just going to come back in down to the center stop at the center again turn the template and we're going to go up so I'm just checking making sure was always that my templates in the correct position it shouldn't be a battle or a fight to quilt but it is a skill that we learn we didn't start out making our first patchwork quilt and having the perfect quilt with all the seams meeting perfectly everything lined up exactly as it's supposed to be that came after a number of quilts so you can't expect to be doing free motion or all work and had that quilt be absolutely perfect the first time you do it so we've done four of our hearts and I'll put another one in here if my fabric drops down in the front like it just did then just pick it up and move it I'm using this wrist to actually keep it there slightly it's a matter of figuring out how to manipulate that fabric and it's just moving it slowly gently we don't want to be battling with it so don't try and do it all at once this is a great little template because you just flip it over and you're going the opposite side so I don't need to have a bigger template it smaller templates may work when you're rule we're working doing big templates are easier when you are doing a lot a smaller piece on your quilt but if you find that you want to put a big template in remember break it down into what it came what the template breaking blocks down to what the template will do and if it's a 12-inch block and you have to make 12 inch 6-inch sweeps to get over that twelve inch block then what you do is work working on just a quarter of the block going to turn and do the other side and away we go again there's lots of tips to help you make this easier the biggest thing to remember how the table that's machine table that's the largest you can get pull the quilt don't try and scrunch it all up and have it scrunched under the foot you need to make sure that when you're quilting you you are working in is smooth you don't want to have it like the one I showed earlier with the block that is actually a messy block because it's been folded up make sure that your scenes before you even start quilting get your seams as flat as you can spiral your intersections when you're making your blocks so you don't have great lumpy bulky intersections in the quilt and we've only got one more to go in there's eight little hearts going around this block often this piece I will move a few times while on quilting there's just nothing to support it in front of me so by just picking it up when I stop giving it a little movement I'm now having a quilt that's moving freely again and that's what it's about just finish this one and then I'll do a couple of straight lines for you stable tape holds your template in place but when working with a bit quad it actually helps you move the fabric so it does two jobs for you and we're back and that's my little eight rotation heart in there I will bring the threads up and so the engine I'm just going to echo a quarter inch around this square and I'll probably put a line through the middle as well I just have stable tape on my straight ruler and I'm just going to come down until my foot touches the edge of the stitching this is where your seams become important if my seams are big and bulky my foot may crash got those seams we don't want big and bulky seams in our quilts learn to have lovely flat seams lovely flat intersections and you won't have to raise the foot way high in the air to get over those seams if you are working on a quilt which has big and bulky seams in it avoid going over those things you can quilt without going over the seams this block I'm not going over the seams but the quilting I put into the center part of this block it went over all those seams and I've got to remember to make sure those threads and not in my way but that will have catching that's ridden it's a good thing to show you that thread that just caught under there Bo I'm quilting that will suddenly stop my court from moving as soon as you get to a point where you can trim those ends off and make them into a smaller length much better we're just going to go down through the center I'm going to come across the bottom again I will just backtrack across there lining up the wall at the edge come across so I'm putting a treble stitch across to get me into that corner over the other side stop at the corner bring my ruler over make sure I'm going to hit that point where I want to and I've just made a little square in that gone in every direction but I haven't turned the quilt to do it so we come out to the point over here and there's a little square done as a quarter square triangle we finished the square here I'm going to move my quilt to the position I need to call tat I'm going to line my template up bring my threads up but before I sew anything I'll make sure everything moves freely the thing about doing a large quilt we're still only quilting small areas we can take a large quilt and fill in the six-inch blocks like I said before on 12 inch break it down if that was a 12 inch block here pretending I would do one quarter one quarter one quarter and the next we need to understand that we're actually doing four large quilt on a small machine and because of that we need to be prepared to move our fabric I'm going to stitch across here just a little bit I'm going to line up my points again the same as I had them the first one I did and now so the next but we need to just have an understanding of how that fabric is moved if I have my quilter all in the wrong position which I will do in a second just get this back into place for the next one if I have this quilt so that the whole lot of it is hanging flat hanging down over edges as I quilt I'm gonna make a mess of this piece probably as I quilt it's going to catch on the different things and it's now going to drag and it's dragging now because it's not moving freely it is now going to drag will move across and do the last one of these in here just the corner over here catching this corner over here is catching the back has all the weight you don't need a giant table this table is only about I think two meters and not a meter wide so it's not a great big table but my quilt is being supported by the table we're back to having my nice pulled around quilt and now we move freely again so I hope that helps any of you who are starting to do a large quilt as to how to move a quilt unfortunately I do not have a pile of quilts waiting to be quilted so I don't have a quilt with big blocks in it to show you I tend to get my quilting Behrman finished and I do not have a load of extra quilts hanging around waiting to be quilted so this is the only quilt we do to actually have here that was not quilted but we're using small blocks small templates this is our crawler used to fill in here this quilt was designed as a sampler quilt and it will be quartered with each quilt block being quoted differently think about how you want to fill in the space as what you want to have come out of your cauldron and show you you can crawl through in here using arcs and circles you can echo stitch in here you could do straight lines coming through here even just doing the straight lines half inch spacing across here and on the pink and leaving the white with maybe just an echo stitch in there so I hope this helps you with your quilting with rulers and templates remember whether it's rewards and templates or you are just doing free motion quilting moving the quilt is the same principle

Channel: WestaleeDesign

Views: 97,603

Rating: 4.8582816 out of 5

Keywords: Templates, domestic sewing machine, Westalee, Brother, Sew Steady, Ruler work, Ruler Foot, Leonie West

Id: 9ihCloblOx8

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2018