Free Motion Quilting is Easy … if You Practice

You have may have heard me say that free motion quilting is a lot like playing a musical instrument because it involves using your brain and your muscles at the same time. Just as you can’t learn the piano by just reading a book or watching a video, you have to actually practice your free motion quilting to develop the “muscle memory” that you use when working on your project. Quilting is like making music. You learn the basics (scales) and practice the piece (motif) then one day the rhythm takes over and you are making music on your project.

I am sure that the need to practice is no surprise to you and I am guessing that you may not be looking forward to it especially if you have taken piano lessons in the past (like I have). Practice does not have to consist of the drudgery of constantly repeating the same motions over and over until you thoroughly hate the skill that you are trying to develop. Let’s face it, you are interested in results not repetition. That is why it is not only important to practice but to practice in the right way. When I teach free motion quilting in The Quilter’s Way, I use a step-by-step process that ensures that you get the most “bang for your practice buck” while building confidence and achieving quick results. My process is based on a few important principles:

Build Muscle Memory

How many times have you seen a technique in a book or watched it in a video thinking “how hard can it be?” only to end up completely frustrated when it turned out to be much more difficult in “real life”? There is a lesson in that experience that I “rediscover” more often than I would like to admit. The lesson is that everything is easy until you have to apply it. Without actually “doing the task”, you will not have properly learned it no matter how carefully you studied the book or watched the video. This principle is especially important in free motion quilting where muscle memory is such a big part of the technique. This is why I include practice exercises at key points in my training to make sure that the student has the opportunity to apply what they have been taught and makes sure it is locked into both their brain and their muscles. I also like to include a project of the appropriate level so that the student can apply what they have learned in an actual project that they can be proud of.

Build Confidence

Building confidence is an important part of learning a new technique. It can be extremely demoralizing if you are asked to attempt something that you are not ready for. Repeated failure while trying to learn will make the process so onerous that most people will give up well before they have made any progress. This is why it’s important to practice the right thing at the right time. Small and frequent opportunities to apply what has been learned successfully builds a student’s confidence and generates a momentum that will help the student committed to mastering the technique. When teaching free motion quilting, I use a number of strategies to build a student’s confidence by:

• Teaching them how to properly set up their sewing machine

• Choosing the appropriate low risk project and exercises to practice on

• Providing some “quick wins”

• Allowing them to work at their own pace

Use Practice Time Wisely

No matter how well an exercise or practice session is designed there can be a tendency to avoid completing them because of “lack of time”.

The hard fact is that without practice there will be no improvement.

Although “lack of time” is often an excuse rather than a fact, the shorter the practice sessions, the more likely the student will take advantage of them. I like to say that if you can spare 15 minutes a day, you have enough time to practice your free motion quilting and improve your skill level. I encourage students to have their sewing machine already set up and some quilt sandwiches available so that they can do some practicing in small chunks of time without wasting that opportunity with having to set up their sewing machine. Multiple short practice sessions are a good way to learn and are often more practical when people have busy lives.

Remember “Practice Makes Progress”. When learning free motion quilting it’s important to focus on progress rather trying to attain perfection.

Download a worksheet so that you can start practicing your loops

Download the free Get Out of the Ditch! guide to learn how to start free motion quilting by clicking here.

If you have struggled (or not attempted) free motion quilting you should check out my course “First Steps Into Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

If you already know how to free motion quilt then you may be interested in “3 Ways to Improve Your Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

P.S. Do you strive to improve your quilting skills? Do you want to have fun doing it? Do you want to meet other quilters in a supportive, safe environment?  If you answered “yes” to these questions, you need to join The Quilter’s Way. The Quilter’s Way is the only quilting membership site that includes both training and an active, supportive online community. Don’t wait another day! Join now.

You Are Wasting Money If You Don’t Do Your Own Quilting

I have talked about the fact that you are wasting money if you don’t do your own quilting on your projects before but I think it is time to do a little math just to see how big the impact can be. As you know, I think there are impacts to not doing your own quilting and direct costs are a tangible place to start. There are essentially two types of direct costs:

Money Paid to Have Someone Else Quilt Your Project

The easiest direct cost to identify is the price you would pay to have someone else quilt your project for you. This can run from $100 to hundreds of dollars depending on how the type of quilting that is done. For this analysis let’s ignore situations where you choose to send an extra special project to a professional for custom quilting. This will be expensive but in certain special situations the results from a professional quilter will be worth the extra expense.

If you know how to free motion quilt, you will find that most of your projects can be successfully quilted by you without a professional’s touch. Let’s take a look at what the cost-savings could be in one year. The cost savings will depend on the number, size, and type of quilting that is done. This will vary considerably between quilters so let’s explore a few scenarios so that we can determine a range of cost savings. For the purpose of the analysis I have assumed that all the quilts would be lap-sized and would cost $100 each for a professional quilter to quilt with an edge to edge design (pantograph).

Your costs will vary depending on the size of quilts that you make and how complex you want the quilting to be. The more creative you become in your project choices, the higher the cost to quilt the project will be. You can see how the annual costs could really skyrocket if you are doing projects that require custom quilting as the cost per quilt could be in the hundreds of dollars.

You may want to do some research locally to see what the costs of professional quilting are so that you can estimate the benefit of doing your own quilting on your type of projects. Once you plug in your own numbers, you will quickly realize that you can save a lot of money if you quilt your own projects. Learning free motion quilting just makes good economic sense.

Money Invested in UFO’s

The other place where money can be wasted is in your stack of UFO’s. Many UFO’s are a result of a quilter stopping after they have completed the top because they don’t know how they should quilt the project. If you are unable to try free motion quilting but are unwilling to get someone else to quilt it, then your project will end up in your pile of UFO’s. The inability to finish the project is a huge waste of effort and money.

Now you could make a case that the money spent on a UFO is not wasted because you will finish the project “someday” so let’s approach this analysis as an assessment of the money you have invested (rather than wasted) in your UFO’s. For the purpose of the analysis I have assumed that all the quilts would be lap sized with a cost for materials ($100 per quilt) and the cost of labour (10 hours *$10/hr) of your effort to complete the top.

As you can see the inability to finish the project is a huge waste of effort and money. In addition to the cost of the “wasted” fabric, it’s tragic to put your creative efforts into a project only to leave it in an unfinished state. This analysis doesn’t include the frustration and of guilt of not completing the project or the impact of having to find somewhere to store the UFO’s.

If you are accumulating UFO’s because you can’t quilt your own projects and won’t send them out to be quilted, then there will be a huge investment in your studio that you or the people that you will give the quilt to are not able to enjoy. If you value your time and your creative work, you need to learn how to free motion quilt so that you unlock this investment for yourself and those that would receive the finished project.

Download a worksheet so you can do your own cost calculations.

The Bottom Line

The costs of paying someone else to quilt your projects or the amount of “investment” stuck in your pile of UFO’s make learning to free motion your own projects a “no-brainer”. Investing in learning free motion quilting will pay massive dividends once you start quilting your own projects.

Download the free Get Out of the Ditch! guide to learn how to start free motion quilting by clicking here.

Now that you know how much money can save by free motion quilting, get more information on my course “First Steps Into Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

If you already know how to free motion quilt then you may be interested in “3 Ways to Improve Your Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

P.S. Do you strive to improve your quilting skills? Do you want to have fun doing it? Do you want to meet other quilters in a supportive, safe environment?  If you answered “yes” to these questions, you need to join The Quilter’s Way. The Quilter’s Way is the only quilting membership site that includes both training and an active, supportive online community. Don’t wait another day! Join now.

Every Quilter Needs to Know How to Free Motion Quilt

I don’t want to put pressure on you but you really, really need to know how to free motion quilt. Some quilters go through their whole quilting life without learning free motion quilting and they are missing out on a huge part of the quilting journey. I believe that using free motion quilting in your projects can be the most creative and satisfying part of the quilting process. Along with choosing the fabrics, quilting your projects is one of the two ways that you can really put your personal stamp on the quilt. It’s a shame that some quilters miss what can be the most creative aspect of the project, even more impactful than choosing your fabric.

Money

Let’s start with the most straight forward reason to learn how to free motion quilt – money! I don’t think that saving money should be the only reason for doing your own quilting on a project but it certainly is a tangible benefit that you will get for every project you quilt yourself. The cost of getting someone else to quilt your project can run from $100 to hundreds of dollars depending on the type of quilting that is being done. Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t send out a project to someone else for quilting. Some of my best quilting friends are long-armers and they can do an amazing job for you. If you have an extra special project that warrants custom quilting and you are not confident you can do it justice, then it is definitely a good idea to get a “professional” to do the quilting. The results from a professional longarm quilter will be worth the extra expense. Most projects don’t need a professional’s touch so if you are able to quilt your own projects, you’ll be able to save money on every quilt that you do yourself. Depending on the number of projects you complete, this can mean hundreds or thousands of dollars in savings in a year.

In addition to the explicit cost-savings of doing your own quilting, the cost of quilting can show up in the number of UFO’s that are in your studio. A significant number of UFO’s (or WIP’s as I prefer to call them) will be stopped at the stage where the top is finished but there has been no progress in the quilting. This is often because the quilter doesn’t know how they should quilt that particular project. They are unwilling to try free motion quilting themselves but are also unwilling to have someone else quilt it. The inability to finish a project is a huge waste of effort and money. In addition to the cost of the fabric, thread and time that have gone into that quilt, it’s tragic to put your creative efforts into a project only to leave it in an unfinished state.

Finally, the cost of having someone else quilt your projects will impact the decisions you make in very subtle ways. If you don’t want to pay someone else to quilt your projects, you may be unconsciously choosing methods for quilting your projects that you are capable of doing (e.g. stitch in the ditch only). You may even be choosing projects to make that don’t need free motion quilting just to avoid the whole issue. Just imagine what you could do if you knew how to free motion quilt yourself.

Control

Not knowing how to free motion quilt means that you are abdicating control over a key part of the quilting process. You will either be sending your quilt to someone else to quilt or you will be making design choices that limit your choices when it comes time to quilt your project. As a creative person you may feel really uncomfortable giving up control of something in which you have invested so much of yourself. By learning how to free motion quilt you will be able to take back control of your projects.

Once you become comfortable with free motion quilting technique, you can complete your project from start to finish the way you want. Quilting just becomes part of the process of making a project and can be adapted to ensure the project turns out the way you envisaged it. You will be able to control the design decisions and the timing decisions for the project rather than be dependent on the decisions or availability of a third person. If you do the free motion quilting, you can complete your project how you want and when you want. Even better, you’ll be able to say that you did it all yourself.

In the situation where you want to send out your project for quilting, your knowledge of free motion quilting will really help you communicate your expectations to the person who is going to quilt it. It can be difficult to communicate how you would like the final product to look if you have never done any free motion quilting. Your experience with free motion quilting will help you discuss options with the professional quilter so you’ll both be happy with the end result. It’s always good to have some knowledge about the service for which you’re hiring someone to avoid miscommunication and disappointment.

With Allison Spence of Meadow Rose Quilts

 Creativity

Enhancing your ability to express your creativity is what I think is the greatest benefit of knowing how to free motion quilt. Being able to complete the whole process when making a project allows you to free up your mind and bring your creativity to bear on the whole project. You will be able to make creative decisions that coordinate all parts of your project from the original design choice, through fabric choices, quilting and finishing. Having control of all aspects of the creative process allows you put your personal stamp on every one of your projects. Not only do you get to make the initial design choices but you can adapt as your project progresses. If your original thoughts about quilting motifs don’t seem to be working out, you can make adjustments to adapt the quilting to your new perspective. The ability to adapt as you move through your project allows you to problem solve and also opens up opportunities to make creative decisions as inspiration strikes you. The ability to influence all parts of your project construction will make the creation of your quilt an integrated, organic design process rather than a set of rigid tasks.

Awesome Blossom pattern from Chatterbox Quilts

As you become more confident in your free motion quilting, you may find that the quilting part of making a project becomes the dominant part of the creative process and the signature feature of some projects. Adding more complex quilting to areas of your quilt will allow you to express your creativity in ways that are not possible if you just do simple quilting. The ultimate example of this is a whole cloth quilt where you start with a “blank page” and use the quilting to make the design. The freedom of not being constrained by a “pattern” or fabric choices can be daunting at first but can also result in some of your most creative work.

Feather courtesy of Terry Rowland of T Row Studios

Finally, as you become more comfortable with free motion quilting, you may find that your desire for creativity leads you to experiment with projects that are on a whole different level. There are an infinite number of ways to combine different quilting such as free motion quilting and ruler work with nontraditional materials such as cork or leather in ways that result in an amazing project. The free form nature of free motion quilting allows it to be adapted to many applications rather than just keeping your quilt sandwich together. Once you get started you won’t want to stop.

Dragon courtesy of Sharon Blackmore of Love Shack Quilts

“Just Do It”

There are many reasons that quilters should know how to free motion quilt but I think that having creative control of your whole project is the most important one. Once you learn how to free motion quilt, you will revel in the creative freedom that you have when quilting even the simplest quilt. Sure, you’ll save money if you quilt your own project but I think that the ability to put your own personal stamp on a project is priceless. So what are you waiting for? It’s past time for you to begin improving your free motion quilting skills.

Download the free Get Out of the Ditch! guide to learn how to start free motion quilting by clicking here.

Now that you know the reasons you need to learn free motion quilting, check out my course “First Steps Into Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

If you already know how to free motion quilt then you may be interested in “3 Ways to Improve Your Free Motion Quilting” by clicking here.

Kim

Creatively,

P.S. Do you strive to improve your quilting skills? Do you want to have fun doing it? Do you want to meet other quilters in a supportive, safe environment?  If you answered “yes” to these questions, you need to join The Quilter’s Way. The Quilter’s Way is the only quilting membership site that includes both training and an active, supportive online community. Don’t wait another day! Join now.

Tips for Holding Virtual Guild Meetings

We’ve been using ZOOM in The Quilter’s Way for over a year now to allow our members (who live in many different countries) to interact with each other virtually. Recently, we held our first virtual quilt retreat, Energize!, to great success. Participating in a virtual meeting is not quite the same as attending one in-person but it sure is a lot more convenient (i.e. no travel and no “forgotten” items). It can allow for some extra creativity such as sharing video courses or photos as part of your meeting. It’s also very easy to host guest speakers from different locations – and it’s a lot cheaper too!

A number of guilds, including the local one that I belong to, are adapting to social distancing by holding virtual meetings. This is a great way to interact with your other guild members at a time when it’s difficult, if not impossible, to be in the same place together. It does take a little getting used to get comfortable using this type of technology, but it isn’t hard and it’s the perfect way to connect with your quilting friends.

If you are considering holding a virtual meeting in your guild, I have a few tips to help the meeting go smoothly:

• Assign someone to “run” the meeting and manage the technology and member interaction to ensure everyone gets to participate. It is difficult to be “leading” the guild meeting and managing the members and technology at the same time.

• Have someone available to help members who may be struggling with technology.

• Decide if the interaction with members is going to be via the chat feature (where people can type in their comments) or video/audio. Video is more interactive but requires a more structured approach to the meeting to ensure everyone gets a “turn” and that only one person talks at a time.

• Provide a fun activity (even just a chat) at the start of the meeting to keep members entertained while people are joining the meeting. It can sometimes take a minute or two for everyone to be admitted to the meeting.

• Encourage members to have good lighting especially if they want to show off their quilts.

• If you are having a guest speak at your guild, work with them ahead of time to make sure that any tech issues are resolved and that they have the right amount of control of their portion of the meeting. Supporting them with member interaction or chat responses helps them focus on their presentation and makes the experience better for everyone.

I am currently booking for virtual presentations or workshops. If you are planning your guild program, I offer the following presentations:

• Conquer Your Fear of Free Motion Quilting

• Setting up Your Studio Space

• How to “Wrangle Your Scraps”

You can go to the Chatterbox Quilts website here to get more information or you can email me at kjh@chatterboxquilts.com if you are interested in hiring me for a guild presentation or workshop. I’d love to speak to your guild or quilt group.

Take Care,

Kim

Creatively,

Tips for Solving Bobbin Thread Issues

In a recent TQW Live, one of the members was having problems with her bobbin thread when making the strip pieced blocks for the Diamond Bright project. The blocks for the project are made using a paper (or fabric) foundation and she wasn't getting great bobbin stitches. There are a few reasons for this:

1. You could be using the wrong bobbin or not have it wound evenly. Check to ensure that you're using the proper bobbin for your brand of sewing machine. In this case, she is using a Janome machine, so Janome bobbins are the best to use. 

2. Your bobbin tension might need adjusting. If you have the ability to adjust the tension in your bobbin case, this is something you should do first before addressing the top tension. If you don't know how to adjust your bobbin tension, check out this video from Handi Quilter (while she is working with a longarm machine, the same information applies when talking about how to check the bobbin tension).

3. Your bobbin area might need cleaning. Follow the instructions in your manual and clean out the entire area, checking to ensure that there aren't any little bits of thread or lint caught in this area. If appropriate, oil that area as well.

3. You might be using the wrong size needle. Make sure you're using the right size needle for the thread you are using. Most needle manufacturers have charts to show you what size needle works best with what weight of thread. 

4. You might need to rethread your sewing machine. Check your manual to ensure you are threading the machine correctly. With the model that is being used in this case, she needs to lock out the machine first before threading it. Not locking out when threading it can cause issues.

5. You might need to change to a different bobbin. While it can be hard to see with the naked eye, the bobbin you are using, while appropriate for your brand of sewing machine, might be damaged. Try winding a completely new bobbin and see if this helps.

6. You might need to adjust your top tension. If your bobbin tension is set properly and you are still having problems with the bobbin thread, you may need to tighten or loosen the top tension. Try making gradual changes in the top tension and check your results.

When having issues like this, it's best to start from scratch and use a new bobbin and a new needle. Unthread your machine, clean out the bobbin area, insert a new needle, wind up a new bobbin, and then rethread your machine and see how it goes. Hopefully one or several of these suggestions will solve our problem.

Creatively,

P.S. Do you strive to improve your quilting skills? Do you want to have fun doing it? Do you want to meet other quilters in a supportive, safe environment?  If you answered “yes” to these questions, you need to join The Quilter’s Way. The Quilter’s Way is the only quilting membership site that includes both training and an active, supportive online community. It’s not your grandmother’s quilting circle! Don’t wait another day! Join now.

P.S. I am an Amazon affiliate and, if you purchase items by clicking through the links in this post, I will receive a small amount of commission. This doesn’t cost you any more $$$, but helps me to continue creating free content for you. Thanks!