Basket Weave with QCT 5 Quilt Along - Part 2

Welcome back to the Basket Weave with QCT quilt along! This week I'm quilting the center of the Basket Weave quilt panel with a variety of designs using Quilter's Creative Touch 5 (QCT 5) beginnings.

Watch this video to learn how to quilt the designs in the quilt step-by-step:

Click Here to download the Basket Weave with QCT Info PDF. This includes a diagram with the designs placed in the quilt and the names listed.

Quilting the Horizontal Rectangles

The Basket Weave quilt panel features horizontal and vertical rectangles that will be easy to quilt with QCT 5 Beginnings. I have loaded my quilt so the longer edge is attached to the rails. This gives me more space to quilt and more rectangles I can fill before having to advance the quilt through the frame.

Let's first quilt the horizontal rectangles. These will measure 4 x 9, 4 x 10, 4 x 11. Use a ruler to measure the space you are quilting before sizing the design.

Follow along with the video above to see how I plan and place the designs to quilt a horizontal rectangle. To fill the rectangles, I chained 2 or 3 designs together, then placed the design using the 4 points placement method.

I always sized the design to be the width of the rectangle - example - 9 inches.

But I always reduced the height by 1/2 inch - example - 3 1/2 inches.

I did this to create a nice margin around the top and bottom edges of the design and to reduce the risk that the design would stitch outside of the rectangle, which tends to look messy.

Quilting the Tiny Rectangles

There are a few tiny rectangles to quilt and these will measure 3 x 4 or 4 x 4 inches.

To plan the designs for these, again, I plugged in the full width of the rectangle - example - 3 inches.

And again, reduced the height by 1/2 inch - example - 3 1/2 inches.

This resulted in a space that was more or less proportional to the longer rectangles. I selected 1 design to fill in the tiny rectangles which looked nice.

Quilting the Vertical Rectangles

If you are quilting on a Qnique 19 or Qnique 21, you will have space to quilt the vertical rectangles without having to rotate your quilt.

To do this, do the same design building / planning as if the space was vertical - example - 2-3 designs chained together and sized 10 inches wide x 3 1/2 inches tall.

On the next screen, use the 45 degree rotate button to rotate the design vertical (you'll have to hit it twice).

The design will end up looking really squished and weird and that's when you use the placement notes - 4 points stretch - to place the design and stretch it back out so it fits the vertical rectangle properly.

If you are quilting on a home machine or a Qnique 15, you will not have space to quilt these designs vertically. Instead rotate your quilt around so all the vertical rectangles become horizontal and design, place, and quilt them exactly as described above for horizontal rectangles.

Outline Quilting / Ditching

Stitching in the ditch is when you quilt in the seamlines of your quilt. The Basket Weave quilt is a printed panel so we're not really stitching in the ditch, we're outline quilting!

You can plan your outline quilting while you're planning your design using the marking tool. Watch that part of the video carefully and you'll find I share many tips on placing the outline points accurately.

But after quilting this entire Basket Weave quilt, I can honestly say this isn't 100% perfect. As the rectangular space is quilted with the design, the outline sometimes changes, which throws off these quilting lines.

So if you want 100% perfection, I advise placing only the design with QCT and using the Ditcher Ruler and ruler quilting to complete the outlines. This is definitely slower, but much easier to ensure your outline ends up exactly where it's meant to go.

Quilting the Background - Free Hand Free Motion Quilting

All of the shapes in this quilt were squares / rectangles and easy to quilt using QCT 5 Beginnings. The red background has a lot of random spaces around the woven design and this is harder to quilt with the beginning level of the software.

For this reason, I quilted the red background with a free hand free motion quilting design called Sharp Stippling.

So that's it for quilting the center of the Basket Weave Quilt! Take your time planning and sizing the designs, then placing them on your quilt.

I was pleasantly surprised by how fast I quilted the center of the Basket Weave Quilt because once I planned and sized one design, it was easy to place it into the next rectangle in the line until the entire row was quilted.

Follow along with more posts from the Basket Weave with QCT Quilt Along: