Previously on Man Sewing you saw me putting together the pieces of this t-shirt quilt.
And I promised you if you asked nice, I would do the free motion machine quilting.
Well today is your lucky day.
Let’s get started.
That’s right, welcome back to the t-shirt quilting project.
I am so thrilled with all the comments and all the enthusiasm out there.
Thank you for encouraging me to take you to the next step and do the free motion quilting.
Quilting on t-shirt quilts, based on the folks I’ve talked to, can be a bit concerning.
And there’s a lot of different things that happen with t-shirt quilts.
So I’m just going to do a little review.
These are old t-shirts that I have already worn pretty well.
So they’ve got a bit of stretch to them.
They’ve got a bit of life worn out of them.
But we want to save our fantastic logos.
So what I did is I took a stabilizer as you can see here in the seam allowances and everything,
hopefully there.
This white that you see on the back is a stabilizer that was ironed to the back of the t-shirts.
And it’s on all of the t-shirts before I start any of the cutting or any of the piecing.
The first video I was putting together the basic patchwork.
And there’s a lot of different ways to do that.
I just finished by putting together the columns and using up the scraps, the leftover parts
from around the logos.
To build out a t-shirt quilt that we could discuss.
I tried to make it big enough that it would create some challenges for me today because
I really wanted to try to answer all of those questions you were asking in those comments,
like what happens when?
So here we go.
We’re going to try to address a lot of those.
Let’s start with talking about the backing itself.
So on the back of this quilt, it’s already totally basted.
I’ve used flannel.
And this is a beautiful, fantastic flannel from Maywood Studios that I just love.
People like flannel because it feels like the t-shirt material itself.
But sometimes folks get concerned about their backing being flannel because of the stretch
or the give factor.
So let’s make sure you pre wash your backing down a couple of times because your t-shirts
were washed and worn so many times.
There’s not going to be any shrinkage left in them so we want to make sure whatever backing
fabric we use, we wash it down really, really well.
Secondly, oop sorry, before we move onto batting let’s finish the backing.
The backings are also sometimes polar fleece or cuddle fabrics.
A fantastic fabric, it also works beautifully with t-shirts.
Same thing, is you, that’s a polyester.
You won’t need to pre wash it but you just want to make sure you have plenty of it.
And the other thing I want to point out with backing is I’ve also left myself a little
extra room around the quilt top because I know that there could be some stretch and
there could be some give.
So I will be trimming down the entire project before I bind it, ok?
I just want to point out that there’s some forward thinking in my patchwork itself.
I was starting to talk about batting.
Batting is one of those things that is optional in t-shirt quilts.
It’s going to add a lot of weight.
And it could add a challenge for the machine quilting.
That means one more layer that can be shifting around and working against us.
So I put it in for that reason specifically.
I’m trying to make this the most difficult quilt to quilt so that we can address those
challenges together.
Most of us if you’re going to use minky on the back you probably won’t use any batting
inside.
It’s just going to be so nice and snuggly just that way.
There’s not really a need for the batting.
But it will add additional warmth if you’re in one of our colder areas in the world out
there.
So anyway, a lot of talk about backing, a lot of talk about batting.
I’ve set this up to answer those questions.
Now one of the things we talked about in the previous video also was using our walking
foot.
Using the walking foot and I referred to t-shirt quilting in that video because t-shirts as
I said, they want to move.
They’ve got some give and travel to them.
A walking foot’s job is to kind of claw from the top and the bottom at the same time
and it’s supposed to help move all of those layers through the machine.
So if I was going to do a stitch in the ditch, excuse me, a stitch in the ditch technique
meaning sewing through all of these seam allowances themselves, a walking foot like this is a
great choice.
Even if I want to free motion quilt this, I could do stitch in the ditch and then return
to free motion.
But I want to address this as all free motion today because we’ve spent some time with
the walking foot before.
And we have links for those videos out there.
So that being said, I’m going to start in the middle of this project.
And I can already see that one of these seams has got a little extra character than the
rest of the area around it so I want to start right in this area today with my free motion
techniques and see what happens as we’re going to try to anchor this area down.
We’re going to drift over into here and we’re going to go around this as it was
an applique.
So I’m using cotton threads in the top and in the bottom of or the bobbin I should say.
I’ve got a sew slip mat down on the bed of my machine.
Now that sew slip mat is a teflon coating for the machine.
And it’s going to make everything travel more smoothly.
It resists the drag.
So the heavier the weight, the more physical weight this has the more it’s going to want
to drag.
So we really want to not only secure the movement but we also want to come in here and I want
to get a lot of this extra loft in my favor.
What I’m trying to say is what’s called a stuff and fluff method.
So we kind of get in here and I’ve got a lot of this extra so I can just move really
nicely before I get started.
And one of the things I learned early on is we get our chores done first at my house and
then we play.
So right now this is the area I am most worried about so we’re going to address it first.
When I machine quilt if I start to travel around in tight little areas it’s very possible
for me to build up a bunch of pucker really quick.
So I’m going to address this with a large, broad pass and then I’m going to come in
and kind of section it out.
And I’m just going to start by having a little bit of fun.
But I did start, got a little bit of a knot here.
So now I’m going to pick up my bobbin thread by taking a single stitch.
And if you don’t know this trick it’s pretty cool, you hold your thread like dental
floss, pull it on through.
And now I have the bobbin thread on the top.
And I’m going to try to drop that first stitch in a seam.
So I can take a couple to hold it in place.
And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to trap this little ripple right away.
And we’re going to come around here and we’re just going to come wide.
Now you notice my pace is a little bit slower.
And I came back on it.
And the other thing I just felt there, let’s talk about that.
I felt the extra thickness of the stabilizer and the two seams of the t-shirt.
So you should expect whenever you’re coming over those seam allowances that there might
be a little more bulk there and for me when I have bulk, I want to have extra speed on
the machine to penetrate so that it’s not slowing it down.
And I don’t want to push.
So let’s go over that seam again and see what happens.
So we’re coming here and as I hit this bulk I want to keep driving through it, driving
through it.
And of course I had that worse spot I was dealing with, that’s what we said.
We were doing our chores first.
Now what you can really see though, is because I have stabilize and I’m addressing this
in small passes now that everything is starting to quilt very nicely.
So I just want to get this thread out of my way.
There’s my little scissors.
And I’m going to start working now into this blue area.
And I”m going to build myself a corner section so I can get onto what would be like that
applique of the really cool Man Sewing emblem there.
Notice how I had to throw the plug in for the Man Sewing of course.
So what we’re going to do now is let’s do some fun echo quilting along those lines.
And I’m just trying to work myself, still respecting that concept of pushing the pucker.
Now I”m down in the area where I can go ahead and address the logo itself inside.
This is the fun of this here.
So now what I want to do is get my thread right on top there.
Now this is not a silk screened logo.
This is an iron on logo.
So I really don’t want to put the needle in it.
It will just make holes.
So I’m going to sew close to it.
And then when I’m done going around the outside edge I will not go back in and sew
in the middle of it because then the logo itself will lift off.
It will have more like that crest or that shield effect.
And when you’re dealing with t-shirt quilts remember, the reason a lot of us wear our
t-shirts is it’s a logo we love.
So when we’re going to be quilting around those logos we want to make sure that we give
that logo the love it still deserves even though it’s a quilt and not a t-shirt anymore.
So let’s not over quilt on our logos.
Let’s not hide them too much with our quilting.
Ok let’s address this.
I think this is a good teachable moment.
I’m coming down here you can see that there’s a little bit of a ripple starting to develop.
So what I want to do is I’m just going to smooth this with my hand down towards the
seam allowance.
And I’m going to continue on with my outlining here.
So what I did is I moved that ripple out of my way.
And then later on when I’m sewing in the blue background I can use blue thread and
sew in that area and try to knock it down like I just did with the black area.
Or I’ll just use the same white thread and do a cool little circular design in there.
The circular designs are great because they push the batting around and hide little ripples.
Where the straight lines a lot of times they kind of form that ripple and at least in my
world, in my quilting.
We are all a little bit different when we do this and so it’s fun to learn a lot of
different techniques.
I appreciate you all enjoying our videos here at Man Sewing.
Ok so I’m coming back up in this area.
And a lot of times when we’ve gone around the perimeter of something, as we’re coming
back into that final zone, now we might be starting to create a ripple or create a pucker.
So what I want to do now is I want to make sure that this is as flat as possible.
I’m kind of spreading my fingers away here and just looking at it.
And then as I come in I’m able to drop that down really nice.
And I did not create any pucker or any ripple there.
That looked really good.
And then I started this fun little arrow motif.
So now I”m going to float back out into the background and do something fun.
And with my straight lines I’m kind of trying to keep my channels a little further apart.
As I was saying earlier so I don’t create the puckers.
And now what I have effectively done is I’ve started in the middle of this quilt, I created
some fun little motif.
I was able to travel over and get around an applique.
So all of that area between where I’ve started and this applique now, I can come in here
and just play.
And when I say play I mean I’m going to do what I like to do because this is my quilt.
My style of quilting is I set some lines and then I just free motion using some of those
favorite motifs that we’ve created.
And so that’s why I hope you’re spending some time in our skills and drills section
at Man Sewing because a lot of these motifs are when I talk about being background I use
them over and over again to create the flattening or the background quilting to make the rest
of the design show up.
So that’s what a lot of those are designed for.
And I hope you’re learning with me as I go.
We created a few new ones recently that I hope you’ll like.
And with that said, I kind of keep forgetting your paying attention because I’m so getting
into my zen of my machine quilting here.
So I’m hoping that this has gotten all of those questions answered about backing, batting
choices.
I didn’t talk about the safety pin basting, I probably should have.
I laid it out as a standard basting.
I just tried to avoid putting the pins anywhere that I’d want to be sewing because I don’t
want to put a bunch of holes or a bunch of pins in my way.
I’ve addressed talking about that walking foot.
Use that when you need for your stitch in the ditch if you like.
But I’m really going to encourage you to play with your free motion machine quilting.
Remember these t-shirts are special, special to the person you’re going to give this
quilt to.
So put some time and effort into the machine quilting.
And do not be intimidated.
People maybe have told you it’s difficult.
But there’s a lot of great ways.
If that stabilizer is in place you shouldn’t have any problems.
Just take your time, enjoy it, review this video a few times.
And we’ll see you next time right here at Man Sewing.
Thanks for being a
Man Sewing fan.
It’s great to have you out there encouraging me to create fantastic new content.
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