Today’s Topic: The Sunny Day Medallion Quilt
Welcome to Week Nine of The Better Machine Quilt-a-long based on my book 25 Days to Better Machine Quilting.
Find all of the previous Lessons HERE.
Sign up for emails of the class HERE.
Good Morning, Quilters!
Today we are going to work with directional stitching to create The Sunny Day Medallion Quilt.
Review
and Six Tips for Directional Quilting.
Mark the Quilt
Prepare a quick quilt fat quarter sandwich and mark the outlines of the quilt. Start with the center square. (If your square ruler is 6-1/2 inches–make your center square 6-1/2 inches–Unlike piecing –in FMQ precision is not very important–so make it easy on yourself!)
Straight Stitching
Using matching color thread and machine guided technique (walking foot or dual feed if available), stitch the straight lines. Increase the stitch length slightly to accommodate all the layers.
Notice that at every corner, you need to rotate the entire quilt. (If you were free motion quilting, you would not need to rotate the quilt!)
Doodle
Draw several six inch squares in your notebook and practice the sun motif. Doodle a spiral with triangles radiating into the corners to fill the entire square. Sample a variety of spiral sizes and try a squared spiral too.
Doodle Dots and Dashes–a great beginner circle motif.
Practice doodling horizontally and vertically.
Stitch the Sun Motif
Set up your machine for free motion quilting with a contrasting color thread.
Quilt the central motif and knot off. Remember to avoid the steering wheel effect when stitching the large central spiral.
Stitch the Inner Border
Stitch Dots and Dashes or Silly Spirals in the first border. To better understand directional stitching, do not rotate the quilt. Instead, try stitching horizontally from right to left, left to right and vertically from top down and from bottom up. (Remember, if this was a queen size quilt, it would be necessary to quilt like this.)
Stitch the Outer Border
Again, do no rotate the quilt as you stitch the Twist in the outer border. In the corners, add a messy spiral to transition directions.
Evaluate
Which direction was easiest? Which was hardest?
What made it easier-natural preference or field of view?
Do you prefer machine guided or free motion quilting–LOLOL! Just kidding, that is sooooo obvious by week 10!
Another Layer of Quilting
The Sunny Day Quilt is beautiful as is. Bind it and use it!
However….if you would like to layer in a little more…the quilt-every-millimeter- LK-style…
Stay tuned tomorrow!
May YOUR day be filled with sunny people and sunny quilts!
Luminous 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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