Focusing in on more free motion skills and drills today.
But today is all about target practice.
But to make it easy we’re doing it on a pre printed panel.
Let’s get started.
We have a bunch of great videos listed in one of our playlists for you all about the
different free motion skills and drills we’ve been doing.
I love to teach this stuff.
But I’ve been doing a lot of it on solid fabrics.
And sometimes that’s just kind of hard.
It’s kind of overwhelming to be looking at a blank canvas and say where do I start.
Now what I want to do today is I want to talk about some of these cool pre printed panels.
One, because they’re great to machine quilt on.
And two, because they make great gifts when you’re all done.
So this is not, I shouldn’t say waste of time in the practice but you can really use
these when you’re finished.
But when I go out and pick and panel to stitch on, I’m looking for, what is it I want to
learn next.
And right now I want to get better at straight line machine quilting but in free motion mode.
So I can go into ruler work.
I can go into longer straight line work, right?
So I’ve chosen this panel today.
And if you look close you can see a lot of straight line work.
And the straight line work I want to still start in the middle of an area.
And I have one, how do I get around the sections and stay, as I said earlier target practice,
right on the spaces as I go.
And you can see right here, I’m not perfect.
You can probably see right here I’m not perfect.
So what I’m first doing is learning to just stitch straight lines by having something
to follow.
But as a good quilter would I start in the middle and I move my way out.
Then later on I am still dealing with straight lines but I’m doing some more intricate
curves as well.
And what I was practicing here was really starts and stops because I don’t want to
carry a thread from the outside of the flower to the inside of the flower.
So I need to be better at my starts and stops as well.
So pick yourself a panel that you love, that you want to work on.
And if you really want to make it just your practice panel, remember you can do multiple
passes just by changing your thread colors so that you can see your newer work.
So work from your darker threads to your lighter threads so you can always see your newest
work and see how much you are improving.
Because I know you are with each stitch.
All you need to do is take the panel that you have.
And I took mine and cut it in half so I would have two parts.
I put a regular backing on it.
I’ve put the batting that I use very often so I’m testing my samples I have at home.
And then I’ve gone ahead and I’ve safety pin basted it.
And I’m safety pin basting around where I will not be stitching at first.
Even though this looks like the center, and I do want to start on this square, because
in this square I have a curved line that I’ll be sewing.
I want to sew my curves first when possible.
Ok so I’m going to sew the curve of this and then I’m going to sew the curve of the
flower.
And then I’m going to come back with this straight line.
So that’s why there are no safety pins in this area.
As we get ready to get at our sewing machine I always have my Sew-Slip mat down.
That’s a teflon coating for my machine.
And it makes it very, very nice so that I have a slippery surface underneath.
And you see I’m wearing my Machinger’s gloves.
Now what I’m going to do with my presser foot up, I’m going to take one single hand
cranked stitch right where I want to start.
And I’m going to bring that thread tail up from the bobbin as well.
And I’m going to smooth this out.
Now presser foot down so I have tension on my thread.
I’m going to take a couple of stitches to lock in.
And I’m actually going to go right around that little spiral that we see in there.
And then I’m going to start out along the sign or the banner, whatever we want to call
this.
And I’m thinking about staying on the line but I’m also thinking about, well let’s
first take a second.
And I’m going to rotate this so you can really see what I’m going to talk about.
I want to cut these threads out of the way so you don’t have to look at them.
Nor do I.
Now as I come around, there’s this line right here that if I keep stitching down this
line I am going to have to come back later and just fill that in.
So watch what I do.
As I come along close, I’m here.
Then I’m just going to quickly fill in that line.
It’s an easy line.
And I’m going to do my darndest to come right back up that same line, fill it in.
And now I can continue on.
And you probably notice I rotated the quilt as well but I didn’t rotate it while the
needle was moving.
So with free motion work we never want to rotate the quilt while the needle is moving
because you’ll see a big stitch.
And as I get close to this safety pin I also want to get in here and remove it.
The safety pin was there to hold all the layers, the backing and the batting and the quilt
top together.
But I have now stitched enough that I can get it out of the way.
So we’re going to follow through here.
I’ll catch the rest of the leaf later when I do the stem below.
And some other things we should talk about.
What about my hand position?
I can see my right hand is starting to come a little far away.
And you can actually see some of the pucker that is happening around the quilt.
So we also want to practice our really good body mechanics so this is all about learning
how to machine quilt while tracing something instead of doing something that would basically
be a blank canvas where you’re out there just floating along.
Here I’m going to come back up.
I’m going to secure as much of this as I can.
And I was talking too much.
I have now painted myself in a corner.
Let’s see how we do that.
I’m just going to try to ride those threads right back out.
Ok I did it.
Not too big of a deal.
So now as I come around the outside of that curve.
Instead of doubling back again I’m going to follow a new line.
I really don’t ever want to lay down more than two layers of stitching because the more
thread you put on top of itself, it will really show up.
And now I’m just following that line.
I’m actually kind of looking just right behind my foot.
It’s obviously hard to do it backwards like this but with enough practice you get good.
But you know if you felt uncomfortable with it you would stop here.
And like I said, you’re just going to go ahead and rotate the project like this.
And you can see where you’re heading so much more easily.
And you can head down there that way.
So now we’re talking about starts and stops and I’m coming right back to a spot where
I basically started from.
So I’m going to take a few stitches in place.
I’m going to lock it down.
And then what I want to do is I rotate by hand up and I’m going to move and tug on
my thread here.
And if I cut right at the knot a lot of times I have also now cut my bobbin thread and I’m
so proud of myself.
Now you saw me going around the squirrel but while you were off on coffee break I needed
to go ahead and go around all of my other objects within this side of the box because
as I said I want to focus on my straight lines.
So we work from the center outward when we’re quilting.
And I’m going to do this first inner straight line next so I can pull the safety pin.
I have basically basted the quilt again by stitching here and over here.
So I’m getting my safety pins out of my way.
And then the other thing that I want to really think about is I want to think about good
places to start and stop.
And I don’t mean the stitch but I mean, well I do mean the stitch but I mean the motion
of the machine itself.
So real quick let’s go ahead and bring that thread tail up again.
So I’ve got the presser foot up.
I’m just kind of pulling on my top thread to bring the bobbin through.
And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and secure the stitches again.
But what I was trying to say is.
This is a straight line.
And I really don’t want to stop within that straight line.
So I’m getting my hands nice here.
And I’m going to come all the way down to this bottom corner so that that way, that’s
my stopping point.
So I’ve got my hands in a position where I can go to there.
Get my machine up, a couple of stitches.
And I’m just looking in front of the needle just slightly.
And then if I feel like I need to I can stop here.
And this is where I could rotate the quilt.
Now this is a really long straight line so I’m going to try to go halfway through.
And as I go halfway through I’m going to stop about where my thumb is at.
And what we want to do now is I’m going to relax and re-move my hands.
And I don’t want to pull or let too much of twist because the fiber could actually
cause the needle to fall off the target.
There we go.
If you’re pulling too much.
So I just want to get a really good re-start up stitch.
Now I can go all the way down to the bottom corner.
I’ll turn the music up and finish out this perimeter and I’ve got a couple of things
that I want to show you right at the end.
I’ll be right back.
Ok I’m back to the final corner and just like before what I want to do is I want to
bring the thread to the top and I want to kind of give a pull and a tug.
And look for my scissors and snip right at that knot.
And again I have freed myself from the bobbin thread as well.
And you can see here that I don’t have any trailing jump stitches but I was also using
my thread cutter right in here because it was convenient.
And what that will do for you is it will leave these little whiskers.
So sometimes you need to come back in here and trim that out.
Now you want to take a couple of anchoring stitches before you use your thread cutter.
So either way it’s tied in.
And this is all about practice.
Excuse me, this is all about practice.
And so what I want you to really do is do it using thread cutter and using the way where
we bring our threads up on our scissors.
And figure out what it is that you like the best for your different samples.
And I also mentioned early on, you can use these panels over and over again.
Not only by using a new color thread and a new color bobbin.
So a great way to do that is use something like your little bobbin buddy to keep your
bobbin and your threads close together.
So that you’re always using the matching thread.
And that really helps you get your tension dialed in and stuff.
It doesn’t have to be the same way but I like the same colors, right?
So you can use that and go around those same straight lines and you work to the lighter
color thread you’ll still be able to see what you’ve done.
And not only that but you also will have some other space.
And I’m getting another idea.
I think I want to talk next about maybe some micro stippling.
So areas and background space you could also go in and practice some of your other type
of stitching and free motion motifs while I’m preparing that micro stitching video
for you 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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