I am having so much fun creating these free motion machine quilting tutorials and these
skills and drills and sets. It is an absolute blast trying to think backwards from what
I’ve been doing naturally for so many years to create in the simple step by step process
so today we’re doing swoops and swirls. I bet you’re dying to get started.
Now our goal with these tutorials is to help all of us that are new at free motion machine
quilting kind of walk through the process of learning how some of the basic shapes turn
into awesome motifs down the road. A couple things I want to point out and recommend.
I love this book by Angela Walters. It’s loaded with all kinds of great motif and design
ideas. But it really talks about taking your quilt and just looking at it one piece at
a time. So I’m trying to think that way when I’m trying to break down swoops and
swirls one piece at a time. If you drop down into the description or the link below we
have these printables for you as well as you can get your supplies there if you need, like
your sew slip mat for your machine. Maybe your Machinger’s gloves that I wear all
the time. I love these things for grip. So we’re starting on a basic, it’s like a
puzzle piece. Or it’s more of a like a stippling but it’s wide open. But it’s going to
help us kind of tipping from a straight line into a curved line, ok? And I’m going to
walk you into the swoops I’m calling them. And then from the swoops we’re going to
start to break ourselves into kind of a pointed or a, what could also become a flame style
shape and we’re going to work through those but we’re not quite going that far today.
And as a quick reminder, we have a quick tip that points out how to use your free motion
machine compass if you’re having problems with your skip stitches or shredded threads
or broken needles, those kinds of things. We’ve got an awesome quick tip that will
give you a bunch of info on how to control your body mechanics a little bit better.
Ok before we get started here on the sandwich or the little sample we’re going to practice
on, we never practice on the real quilts, right? We always practice on a little sample
and we always warm up before we get started. I want to point out some of the bad before
we point out some of the good. Look at this real closely here. Now we’re on the back
of the project right now so you’re looking at the bobbin thread. This orange was from
my needle and I left it there on purpose because that is what happens if we begin free motion
machine quilting and our presser foot is up. The presser foot controls the open and close
of your tension disks. And it’s really hard to tell with a hopping foot, check this out
on the machine. This is a spring loaded hopping foot, right? So when it’s up versus down,
it’s very hard to see when the quilt is on. So if you get a bunch of crazy noise like
loose marbles in your machine, you might have to cut this out. You wouldn’t normally want
to leave that but I just wanted to leave that to point out the difference between poor tension
and no tension. So that’s no tension. Now what we’re going to do again, we’re going
to start on this basic puzzle piece shape practicing kind of our moving from side to
side. Kind of our fluid water style motion, right? And then we’re going to go into some
swirls and then we’re going to start putting some sharp points on those swirls. Those are
the three skills we want to work on today.
Now I have my feed dogs down because I am in free motion mode. I have my spring motion
foot on. I’m going to sit down so I’m a little bit more comfortable here. And we’re
going to get ourselves started. Normally you’d be starting in the middle of your project
as I am here today. I’ve got my presser foot down and I want to bring the bobbin thread
up. So I’m going to take a single stroke by hand or if you have like a push button
you can do that with. And then what I do is I lift my presser foot back up and I take
my thread and I literally floss it under the foot like that. And that brings up both thread
tails. If I had been using a thread cutter I would have such a small tail I wouldn’t
be able to bring that up so I just take a few stitches in place. But we’re just going
to lock this in real quick. And then I’m just going to begin curving out of here. And
I want to cut this thread because it drives me crazy visually. And the other thing I want
to point out is when we’re doing our swirls or if we have a very large project we want
to kind of think about our start and stop points. It’s very difficult to start and
stop in the middle of an arc and have it look good. And the bigger the quilt, when we restart
the more the quilt wants to shift and the stitches can get out of sync. So I’m kind
of up in the arc and as a start I have to take a few small stitches to make sure I’m
on target. And you’ll hopefully be able to see that in the camera.
So now with our swirls or our puzzle pieces we’re just working on not actually staying
in a straight line so almost more of a circular line. And I’m just going left to right.
And I’m coming around. Now some of the questions we get is what about stitch length? Well when
you’re in free motion your stitch length is controlled by the movement of your hands.
So if I’m getting really tiny little stitches like I’m doing right now, my machine is
moving way too fast and my hands are moving way too slow. And if I get, oop, I’m going
to go slow with the machine and move my hands really fast, I’m going to get these giant
stitches that won’t even lock in. See those big giant stitches. So that means that my
hands are moving too fast. So now back to our drill. I just wanted to point that out.
We’re going to take our motion and just side to side. It’s also stippling, right?
But it’s more organized than that. And the reason I want you to get organized on that
is you’ll notice maybe even on my fingers I’m doing a lot of my control with my finger
tips. And I’m just looking at the equal distance between the stitching. This is a
very easy one to start with. Now what happens though, I’m going to start working my way
to the top.
And we’re going to go right into our swirls drills. Because every now and again I’m
going to come around a little too far and now I’m in this spot right here. And instead
of doing a sharp point out, we’re going towards the sharp points in a little while.
But right now I’m going to arc around and arc back around. And then like in my straight
line drills I’m just following the line. And a lot of times then I’ll wrap it around
one time. So say now look it’s like a spiral. And then I’ll come back out here and I’ll
start to do it all over again. One of the things I”ve always felt was important with
machine quilting is even if it’s a mistake, make it look intentional so that you’re
making it so that is happens over and over again. You can tell that it’s very hard
for me to talk and machine quilt at the same time. And it’s really hard for me personally
to stay within a motif. So this has been a really fun exercise. So curving it around.
You can make big ones and small ones. Now from this point on, once you master that kind
of comma shape or that swirl, let’s work our way over to another section. And we’re
going to start to put in those flames, right?
So as I come around, I shouldn’t say flames, at least some sharp points. But as I come
around this time I’m going to stop at the point and then I’m going to arch it back
around. So that is not a rounded tip at all. That’s comes in, comes again and stops.
Now when we’re doing our corners we want to make sure we don’t spend too much time
in the corner because what it will often do is it make a real big ball of thread on the
back of the project. So you want to be able to with your free motion both be able to go
rounded and back around. As well as to come out and do sharp points so that you can continue
to build on all styles and different motifs just using the basic swoop or swirl. And then
that pointed line of course is going to go into flames if we want to. And then we’re
going to break those down for you in a little big longer. What I really enjoy doing is actually
doing combinations of both. The swirls with the sharp points included like this one right
here. Oh I’m having so much fun. Now I could do this all day long on this little sample.
And I really suggest you do it until you’re really comfortable with it. But what I also
want to show you really quick here is one of the ways we can do this on our bigger quilts
because that was the challenge. This is where I started this whole series of tutorials.
Is what do you do when you’ve got a ginormous quilt? And like I said with Angela. She wants
us to focus on just one small section at a time.
And right now because I’m over towards the smaller edge of the quilt, even though I have
these cool bicycle clips holding the meat of the quilt wrapped up out of the way, I
don’t need to put this underneath the quilt right now because I’m getting closer to
the edge. So I’m just going to bring my quilt around this way. This would be what
we call the fluff and stuff method. So I have a little bit of this in here fluffed in location.
And I’m just going to work back to where I was quilting. Because we want to quilt from
the middle outward. That pushes all the batting and the loft back out, ok? Now I did use my
thread cutter just a moment ago so I won’t have the opportunity to bring that, that stitch
up. But look what I’m going to do here I’m just going to focus in here on these, maybe
this one triangle shape. Maybe I’ll continue to carry it through. I’m not worried about
the whole quilt right now. I’m just thinking about what I’m going to do for this one
motif. And I’m going to start where I stopped before. Take a few stitches. I want to double
check to make sure that presser foot is down because I don’t want a caterpillar on the
back of my project. And then I’m going to immediately come out of here into a nice arcing
swirl. I’m going to stop at that point because then I can cut my threads. And remember I
said it’s hard to get a good start and stop point. So instead of making this round, this
is going to be one of those hooks. Coming back out. See how nice that looks. Now I can
either continue to hook so that my motif remains consistent. Coming down off of the bottom
coming to my hook. Back around. Coming down to the bottom, up to my hook. Back around.
But I can also bring around the soft side of it this way. And maybe I can do myself
one of my swirls. Follow that hook, back around with another hook or two because I want to
get myself where I can do another swirl. So there’s nothing wrong with mixing your motifs
as you work.
So you can see how easy free motion machine quilting can be even on a big project if you’ll
just take the time and focus on the basic elements of your design and your motif as
well as just look at one small section of your quilt at a time, not worry about the
overall project. I want to remind to please bounce below into the description. Print out
these skills and drills printables. They’re there for you to use. You can even take a
pencil and draw across the top to the designs, right? One of the keys to that is don’t
lift the pencil up. Because that way you’re practicing it just like you would be quilting
it. And we’re getting that motor memory going. And as I said I have all kinds of other
tutorials we’re building around this concept of the basics of free motion. So make sure
you’re following along and we’ll see you next time at Man Sewing