Free motion quilting: sketching with thread

Imagine that you had to cover a whole piece of paper with doodles, and never take the pencil off the paper. That's kind of how I approach free-motion quilting.

When you free-motion quilt, you disengage the feed-dogs on your sewing machine. Feed-dogs are the jagged teeth that sit in the base of your machine just under the needle. When they are engaged, they feed the fabric through at a steady pace. When you disengage the feed-dogs, you control the speed and the direction of the fabric as it passes under the needle. You control the pattern you make by moving the fabric.

Sounds easy, and it is, when you are using small pieces of fabric -- that's why I always encourage new free-motion quilters to practice on a small project. I learned to free-motion quilt by doing fabric postcards. It's harder to do it on a bigger quilt because there is more quilt to move around, but it's not impossible. Also, you don't have to leave the needle in the fabric -- but it goes faster if you can make your design without having to lift the needle and move the fabric all the time.

Many of my free-motion quilting involves swirls, hearts, and leaves. I've had enough practice to get them to look right. Today I free-motioned tulips; a favorite motif of mine, but one that I have not done free-motion yet. I also tried to do a sky -- wind (more swirls) and clouds.

These photos are small memo book covers that I am making to sell in the boutique at the Quinobequin Quilter's quilt show later this month (March. 25 & 26 in Neeham, MA).

The photo with the zipper is the start of a purse. I'm not quite sure what that's going to look like -- I'm toying with making the sides a circle (so it finishes as a cylinder) or maybe a teardrop shape. I'll post it when I finish.

I also started doing a few chenille potholders, but more on that tomorrow.