First Free Motion Christmas Table Runner
For this Christmas Table Runner PDF Instructions - see my shop above or my Etsy store at Atticarts
With my stubbornness in hand I continue on my way to learn how to quilt. If you have been following along I have a long term goal to create pictorial art quilts. As I’ve begun down the path of acquiring the necessary skills to even begin my first pictorial quilt, I stumbled upon free motion quilting. If you’re a quilter you already know what I’m talking about and the shrouded ominous mystery around this skill. I must be brave or just utterly naive, but I composed this little project and decided free motion quilting would be the best way to finish the quilting of it. I didn’t love the boring straight lines of my last table runner so I was ready to try something new.
I saw a somewhat similar table runner out there in Pinterest web-land and began to recreate it with my own twist. I began with an idea on sizing and started my favourite part…shopping. I don’t know what it is about beautiful fabric stores, but to me they fill me with the same excitement and glee that libraries do. I think I must be drawn to the two things they have in common, neatness and endless possibilities. If you’re a fabric lover you know that glee that is beauty and endless possibilities needs to be reigned it. If you let it get the better of you, you’ll end up with a bigger than necessary stash of fabrics, a hefty credit card charge and no clear direction other than the ridiculous over positive “I’ll figure it out, it will be fine!” Its fun, but daunting and mind boggling, mixed with regret. Not the best combination.
Once settled on the general parameters of my project and fabric in hand I began cutting and piecing my top. I knew I wanted some white space to allow the quilting to be more visible and I allowed some options and variability shapes and words in either end of my runner. This part was rather easy and much easier than block quilting. Piecing is straight and doesn’t even require too much precision.
I made 7 runner tops in total and made quick progress basting them. I also learned how to appliqué by looking it up online, printed and traced lettering and shapes, making several of each kind and ironing everything on my tops. Then it was time to quilt them and in walked free motion quilting. This is when all progress came to a screeching halt. Don't get me wrong it's amazing, and looks so good in the photos I found online, but oh my gosh.....it's hard, but its still doable. Its a time put in equation.
If you don't know what free motion quilting is, I highly recommend looking it up. In short, its basically quilting using your home machine, with disengaged feed dogs (the under the needle part of the machine that moves the fabric), a free motion sewing foot to basically draw (with your needle as the pen and the thread/stitches as the ink), on the quilt top. Stitch direction and length is determined by you and how smooth you can move the fabric to create shapes with the stitching. Finessing the relationship between speed of your sewing pedal, flow of the fabric and drawing of the designs while spacing the shapes to cover corners etc was much more difficult than I realized.
I quickly learned that free motion quilting can be gorgeous and versatile, and a beautiful adventure when done well, and down right ugly when done not done well (or as a beginner). And because you are quilting a quilt top that you have already spent hours creating the last thing you want to do is ruin it with ugly stitches on top.
I did however receive some excellent advice and encouragment by the nice lady at my local quilt store. Only given after her warnings and my more than positive and persistent attitude. She explained how important it was to practice doodling. I understand now that its basically like trying to hold a crochet hook and yarn in 10 fingers for the first time and somehow making everything work to the same goal. It takes the creation of new neuropath ways that didn’t exist before. And that is tough and slow to do. On the upside I didn’t seem to get too bogged down by the time commitment and I finally had a reasonable justification for my Apple Pencil and iPad.
After browsing books, Pinterest, watching some YouTube videos I settled on a holly leaves and berries. It seemed to be something I was decent at drawing. Side note - the actual quilting doesn't take that long, but practice doodling really does. After doodling the design over and over tackling it over the course of a couple of weeks, I practiced the stitching them on my practice fabric sandwiches (mini scrap quilt replicas).
Getting the timing of stitches and the movement smooth and knowing when to stop and when to not stop in a design to avoid the wiggles takes time. Also I probably wasted a week fussing with tension. Did you know you can adjust bobbin tension? I was sure at one point I may have broken my bobbin case and yes I ordered a new one on amazon. The difficulty is there aren't hard fast rules. Every machine is different, every needle, every thread wt. It really is a frustrating ordeal to get things just right. I found with mine that I need the tension very loose on my bobbin and decently high on my upper thread to get nice uniform stitches (see photo below) in both the top and bottom of the quilt. You can check tension by using contrasting threads in the upper and bobbin threads. Check you practice swirls and if you see threads peaking through, then there is likely a tension problem. (more info on my experience in the following blog post)
Tension issue can usually be adjusted with just the upper thread tension. But I found that to get the right balance I needed to turn up my upper tension to high and it would constantly break. I also found that I couldn't quilt with the needle in center position as my thread would break. It had to be offset. I really wanted to try it with a different free motion foot, mine is the clear oval shape but I thought it might be easier to see what I was stitching with an open toe C shape foot. But after trying it and attempting to find proper tension with that foot I gave up and went back to the original.
For this Christmas Table Runner PDF Instructions - see my shop above or my Etsy store at Atticarts
