Hello My Quilting Friends! This month's Quilty Box arrived filled with fun gear and beautiful fabrics to play with and I decided to use this as an excuse to practice free motion quilting designs! Learn how to quilt four fun designs in this tutorial and practice quilting around floral motifs:
Quick links to things mentioned in this quilting tutorial. Note: I use affiliate links to help support my business at no extra cost to you!
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Practice Free Motion Quilting on Printed Fabric
The Quilty Box for July 2018 was filled with fun gear picked by Yoko Saito and a beautiful printed fabric panel. The fabric had larger floral designs that instantly made me itch to quilt around them with different free motion quilting designs.
So that's what I did! I used white Isacord thread and outline quilted around the floral shapes, then filled in the background space with four different free motion filler designs: Brain Coral, Stippling, Paisley, Matrix.
I quilted this fabric very densely so the designs would stand out and I would get lots of repetition for each design. While you may not want to quilt all your quilts densely, it's great for free motion quilting practice because the more repetition you get, the better you will get!
And the smaller you stitch your designs, the more repetition you will get with a smaller amount of fabric used up!
Note: I'm always asked about wasting fabric to practice machine quilting. Practice is NEVER a waste. Your quilted squares can be turned into pot holders, quilted fat quarters can be turned into throw pillows and blankets for the animal shelter, and even small rectangles can be sewn into bags.
That's exactly what I made with my quilted panel! I cut up the piece into two rectangles and used the bag strap from Quilty Box to create this cute zippered pouch! Click Here to learn how to make a zippered pouch.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and practice your favorite quilting filler designs on your Quilty Box fabric too. Click Here to check out Quilty Box.
Let's go quilt,
Leah Day
2 comments
Wonderful Katie! Thank you for sharing! I agree – the more wild and fun the better!
I save all my FMQ practice pieces and when I have enough I sew them all together like a jigsaw puzzle (quilt-as-you-go style) and Voilã! I have another quilt, whether it be baby quilt, lap quilt, throw quilt, or bed quilt size. I think it’s more interesting if the fabrics and thread are different than all the same.