Road Maps - Short and Sweet

hi there it's Helen gotten all the way from Australia and I'm the Handy quarter Sweet sixteen ambassador and this is a little segment we like to call short and sweet today I'm going to show you a little style of coding I like to do called road maps and here's a sample I've stitched out here to show you and it's a lovely way of giving you a bit of confidence when it comes to filling an area that you need to quilt so whether that be a whole block or around an applique for instance in a block how to fill that area with a pattern by giving yourself a little help with a road map so let's have a look what I'm talking about here so I'm using a marker this is an iron away marker so it works particularly well on dark fabrics as well but it gives me that block to work into and now I'm going to draw myself a road map so this is just a collection of lines that are joined together as if I'm trying to enter every area of this little suburb here with a road that goes and fills the whole space so I just gently join some lines together like roads you might like to think of this as a branch it might look like a branch of a tree but I'm creating those lines making sure that every area of the space is pretty well filled by this road map so again this mark is going to iron away so it's giving me something to follow and making it a less of a blank canvas it's taking away that scary blank canvas kind of idea and giving me the heads-up of where I want to go next it'd be like having a GPS I guess and now for this one as I'm following along this path I'm going to be stitching just one side of it so about a quarter of an inch but it doesn't really matter but I'm just going to choose a space about a quarter of an inch and in this one I'm going to be adding a little feather shape each time going either side of that little road map that I've created and being very conscious of the side of my block that I'm trying to fill with this pattern [Music] so it doesn't matter which side of that block I started on I'll just follow one side of that path and I'll always go right the way through it and finish at the other end [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so you can see that managed to fill that block pretty well by having that little roadmap to follow it certainly made it easier than if I was trying to do that without having those markings there first so always when I'm teaching people about quilting I'm always suggesting they use some sort of marker whether it be an iron away pencil or a blue wash away marker or your fabric chalk something that gives you direction or position or boundaries to work into I often I suggest you don't draw the entire design on there because if you were to draw the entire design by the time you've done that you could have actually stitched it and quite often what happens if we draw the entire intricate design when we stitch over it sometimes what we're thinking in our mind is more about I must stay on that line rather than filling the area with freeform stitching so using your marker as guidance or positioning is more what I like to do I'm going to show you a different example now the same idea of that road map so Road map or a branch and if you can see that on Canberra I'm just making sure that that whole area is filled of course this could be any funny shape you could have a little practice of this yourself by creating any shape that perhaps is going around an applique etc now with this one instead of the feather shapes I'm going to have little sort of twig shapes so this is going to look very much like a branch or twigs [Music] [Applause] [Applause] now I'm gonna stop there because I can see a large area that I'm not gonna be able to fill very well so that's easy get my marker add another little section of the road [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that's got quite a different look to the first one but look at how well that has filled that area but I find it really fun actually the fact that I've drawn this little road and I can always find my way out again I wish it was that easy when I was drawing of driving around here in America so there we go I'm gonna try to show you one more version now this time instead of being a branch I'm going to create a road map but with curls so with this one I'm creating just a simple little curl and then joining another curl onto it and filling that area just like previously making sure that this roadway fills my little suburb that I'm working into so just making sure that one curl touches on to another and fills that area and now again I'm going to stitch about a quarter inch away from that white marked line knowing that that marked line is going to disappear later on [Music] [Applause] so there we go we've filled that block quite nicely and that would work really well around an odd shaped applique or something like that I'm gonna try this one now in a micro scale so much smaller this would be lovely in a border or something like that but I'm still gonna use my marker and I'll show you how that's done so I'm still drawing the little curls on and as long as they all touch each other and are all linked up to each other this will work all the way down this border [Music] [Applause] I think that looked terrific down a dark border with say gold metallic thread or something like that very nice so why don't you have a try with that one in different shapes and see here you go with roadmaps hope you've enjoyed that one see you very soon [Music]

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 26,640

Rating: 4.9785905 out of 5

Keywords: Handi Quilter, Longarm, Sewing, Quilting, Quilts, Free-motion Quilting, Finishing Quilts, quilter, longarm quilt, quilting tips

Id: 4BAWC0v6SkA

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 02 2019