Stitching Spools-A Free Motion Quilting Tutorial

Happy Tuesday and Happy Tutorial Day!

Today we are working on an update of an old tutorial, FMQ Spools.

This pattern is tweaked a bit for our Mystery Quilt-a-Long.   By now, some of you have guessed, we are stitching spools onto our grid…

The Mystery is not completely solved…we still have much to investigate.

Last week, we created a spool template.  Today, we will be working with the template to create a wide variety of spools.

THE SPOOLS OF THREAD TUTORIAL

TRACE THE TEMPLATE

For this practice, draw a straight line across the width of your fabric and trace the spools along the line.  Space the spools approximately 1/2 inch apart.  Don’t measure–this is good practice in “eyeballing”–(learning to space things without a ruler), and is an essential skill for free motion quilting.

Begin stitching on the STRAIGHT SIDE of the spool.  (It is tempting to begin on the bottom line…)  Leave a small tail and stitch up the side, follow the line across the top and down the short angled line.    Stop at the top of the Right Straight Side of the spool.

NOTE-For this project, leave the tail of threads at the beginning…we want the tails as an added design element.

Stitch a line from the right side of the spool to the left side of the spool and back again. (photo above)

Next, continue stitching down the right side of the spool, along the bottom and at angle back to the thread tail.

Stitch a double line at the bottom of the spool.

From here, you can decorate the spool with any creative stitches.

Then stitch a loop-de-loop and begin the next spool.

Decorate the spools with as many different stitches as possible.

(If you’re brave, you can even try The (sometimes) Dreaded Zig Zag…

Other nice choices include:

The Twist, The Twist Variations, The Twisted Rope…

You may also add spirals and loops…

Be a wild and crazy quilter!???

Tomorrow–we will add a spool to our Mystery Quilt…but don’t get ahead of us…

Happy Stitches!

Lori

PS…All tutorials, images and information are the property of Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt and are intended for personal use only.  Feel free to re-blog, share or tweet with attribution to The Inbox Jaunt.  For all other purposes, please contact me at lckennedy@hotmail.com.  Thanks!