Today’s Topic: Design Your Own Custom Quilting
Welcome to Lesson Twenty Five of The Better Machine Quilt-a-long based on my book 25 Days to Better Machine Quilting.
Find all of the previous Lessons HERE.
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Good Morning, Quilters!
This week we will finish up the bar quilt project we created in Lesson 21.
(Page 106 of 25 Days to Better Machine Quilting)
The assignment for Lesson 21 was to create a bar quilt-or row quilt–with half square triangles, flying geese triangles, square block, alternating with solid fabric rows. To practice outlining, we stitched all of the pieced blocks with matching color thread.
It is time to go back to that project and design your own custom quilting in the solid fabric rows.
Doodle a Few Designs
For your design, remember:
Solid fabrics reveal quilting. This is a great opportunity to show off your free motion quilting skills with a fun motif.
Use your transparent overlay to audition several motifs. Your first idea is rarely the best idea.
Doodle the motifs in different sizes. For example, if you are stitching circles, play with a variety of sizes. If you are stitching a flower, experiment with spacing.
Thread and Motif
Experiment with thread: weight and color.
Check out the tutorial I stitched for BERNINA’s We All Sew–Free Motion Quilted Hearts.
(The tutorial includes a short video of me stitching it on my Q20-tabletop long arm.)
The hearts would be perfect in the rows of this quilt!
For the BERNINA tutorial, I used 12 wt cotton thread which is tricky for most domestic sewing machines. Use a size 100 or 110 needle and stitch slowly. The tension on the back is not great, but I love the effect overall. If your machine gets cranky–use 28 wt or 40 wt thread. The high contrast color will help the motif stand out.
Samples!
Sample a few different threads. Samples are the answer to disappointing results! While you are testing threads, you also have the opportunity to practice stitching the motif.
YOU Are Creating a Custom Quilt
By choosing different motifs for each section of the quilt, you are creating a custom quilt!
As you can see, it’s not necessarily harder to quilt a custom quilt, though it does take a bit more time to design.
Take Your Time
Don’t rush the design phase of quilting. You’ll be amazed how many options there are for any quilt block.
And if you can’t choose between two or more–
Make another quilt!
What about YOU?
Have YOU been keeping up with the lessons?
Would YOU benefit from a refresher course?
Should we start again?
We’d LOVE to hear YOUR ideas for the next 25 weeks….
Happy Custom Stitching!
Lori
PS…All tutorials, images and information are the property of Lori Kennedy Quilts and are intended for personal use only. Feel free to re-blog, pin or share with attribution to LKQ. For all other purposes, please contact me at Lori@LoriKennedyQuilts.com. Thank you!
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