Ready to quilt another walking foot quilting design? Jagged Cosmos is a really fun zig-zaggy design that's super fun to quilt with your walking foot. Learn how to quilt Jagged Cosmos in this new walking foot quilting tutorial:
Click Here to find the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day. Inside you'll find 30 fun walking foot quilting designs with tips on how to use them in real quilts. This book also includes the quilt pattern for Marvelous Mosaic, the quilt we're making together with these squares!
Tips for Quilting Jagged Cosmos with Walking Foot Quilting
The first step to quilting Jagged Cosmos is to break down your quilting space and pick the center point for the jagged lines to radiate out from. Just like with Bright Star, I positioned that spot slightly off center which made the quilting design much more interesting when quilted in this square sandwich.
As you can tell from the video, quilting this design is a bit of a stop-start process as I had to tie off and bury every thread tail in the middle of the quilt before quilting the next line. It can also take a bit of time to plan the design and decide how close or far apart to space the lines.
Some quilting designs just take more time so make sure to account for that when planning to use Jagged Cosmos in your next quilt.
Just a quick reminder about my machine settings:
For walking foot quilting I always set the stitch length to 1.5 mm and place a Queen Supreme Slider on my sewing table to the left of the feed dogs like so:
However, for this Marvelous Mosaic Quilt, I have Minky fabric on the back which likes to grip the machine and table. When using this fabric on the back, I increase the stitch length to 2.5 mm.
What's that weird thing on top of my machine? That's a small magnetic pincushion and a cheater needle. I keep those handy for tying off and burying loose thread tails as I quilt, which I had to do a lot in this tutorial! Click Here to learn how to tie off and bury your thread tails.
Watch out for the the center!
When quilting a design like this where all the lines come together in a single point, you'll need to watch out for thread build up. As you quilt more lines starting in a single point, the threads can pile up on top of one another, creating an area that's much more dense than the rest of the quilt.
If you're not careful, this can create distortion and the finished block or quilt will not lay flat over that area. It will bubble up because that area has a lot more quilting lines space tighter together than all other areas.
It's perfectly fine to begin some lines 1/2 or even 1 inch away from the center spot. Pull up thread a small distance away to begin your next jagged line. The texture will look the same, but it will greatly reduce your chance of the density of the quilting causing a problem.
Free Motion Quilting or Walking Foot Quilting?
I've also quilted Jagged Cosmos with free motion quilting and you can see how this works in this quilting tutorial:
Quilting this design with free motion quilting might feel a bit easier because the foot is smaller and you can better judge the distance between the quilted lines. The walking foot is a bit clunky and can cover so much of the quilt it's hard to see what you've quilted when it's positioned over an important area.
However, it's harder to quilt straight lines with free motion quilting because the foot hovers and doesn't give you the same stability as a walking foot. So there's upsides and downsides to both methods when quilting Jagged Cosmos.
Try quilting this design with both quilting methods and see what you think! There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to quilt any design, so just pick the technique that works best for you.
No matter which way you stitch it, Jagged Cosmos is a fun way to add beautiful texture and easy straight lines to any quilt!
Would you like to learn new machine quilting designs and make a big, beautiful quilt?
That's what we're making with Marvelous Mosaic!
We're quilting all 30 designs from the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day and we're going to connect together the best 20 to create the Marvelous Mosaic Quilt.
Click Here to find all the walking foot quilting videos I've shared so far. We're making three quilts together from this book and you can join in the fun and follow along anytime!
Let's go quilt,
Leah Day
Find more walking foot quilting tutorials by clicking the links below:
