Beginner Quilting Session 8: Layering and Quilting

Now that we have all of the components of our quilts, we can actually start doing some quilting. So again, I have my backing fabric, my batting and my quilt top all layer together and I'm going to do some basting, and I'm going to do that with pins. Now I have some straight pins that I can use for basting. And I also have these curved safety pin looking pins that I showed you earlier. Again, they're just a little bit curved so that way when you put them into the fabric, they're not actually buckling your fabric as a straight safety pin would do.

So I'm gonna show you how to use both of those today. But what you want to do when you're getting everything ready to layer together, is that make sure everything is nice and flat. I have a really small sample right here, so it's really easy for me to just simply flip up either side, check and make sure that everything is nice and flat. If I'm making a larger, queen or maybe even a King size quilt, I would obviously be laying this on a much larger surface. I may even lay it on the floor if I don't have a table big enough.

In that case sometimes I will actually pin my backing fabric into my carpet pad so it holds it nice and flat or say I have hardwood or I am using a table, I can actually take some painters tape or something and I can tape my backing fabric to the floor and make sure that everything is nice and flat, because once I start pinning and basting and then actually get onto the quilting, I don't want to have any puckers or anything in the back fabric. So making sure that everything is nice and flat before I put any of those basing pins or anything in place really just helps me in the long run. Now, what I like to do is I'm going to start in the center of my little quilt sample and work out when it comes to putting my basting pins in. The reason I'm going to do that is I don't want to say start in the four corners because then maybe if I had a little pucker, I've already got pins in those corners, and there's nowhere to spread my fabric out. So I'm gonna start with a couple of the straight pins, and I am just going to put these in right here in the center and I'm making sure I'm going through all of my layers.

So I'm gonna flip this over real quick. So you can see the pin was all the way through my quilt top through my batting and through that backing fabric. And I can just keep putting pins in a few inches apart, working, starting from the center, smoothing as I go, putting in more pins. I do like to use the straight pins like this that have the flat part on the top like this, rather than around a ball or a glass head or anything on them, because I could actually keep these, if I'm getting, if I'm stitching close, my presser foot can go right over that. I don't want to hit it with my needle but I mean the presser foot can still go over that nice and easy.

So again, I can keep smoothing, working out towards the corners, putting in pins as I go. And keep going like that. And I'm gonna switch and use some of these handy basting pins. Now reason that I would pick to use these basting pins over the straight pins is if I've made this, but I'm going to fold it up and I may not quilt it for a couple of weeks or something. Well, when I unfold it, maybe I don't want to risk any of these pins falling out.

I know these, these basing pins are going to stay in place because I can simply lock them just like a safety pin. Again, it's got that little curve in it that really helps keep your fabric still laying flat with those pins in place. Now I have a small version of these pins so I'm not taking very big bites of fabric but you can get these in much longer versions as well. So you can grab much more fabric in your pin. So I'm just going to put a few more as I get out towards the edges, making sure everything is nice and flat.

The long straight pins are definitely a little easier to put in. They go in a lot faster. So if that's something that you are wanting, then you can pick the straight pin option over those curved basting pins. A few more down on this side, and then everything will be layered and basted together. And we'd be ready to quilt it.

More down at the bottom and we are ready to go. So well when it comes to quilting, there is a special foot for that as well. So we had our quarter-inch foot for piecing and we have a different foot for quilting. Now for doing some free motion quilting, we're going to use a free motion foot. Sometimes this can also be called a darning foot, and this simply is another foot that you can either buy separately, if it doesn't come with your machine, and it just attaches onto your machine, like you would a walking foot or another one of your specialty feet.

You don't have to have this special foot to do some quilting. And I'm gonna show you a couple of versions of quilting that you can actually use your regular presser foot for, keep your feed dogs engaged, and it makes it a lot easier to first practice with quilting, 'cause you really can concentrate and get a feel for how much your fabric moves with each stitch. That way, when you do move on to doing some sort of free motion quilting, you'll know how fast to move your fabric underneath your presser foot. So I have my regular presser foot back in place. What I'm going to do is just some straight line quilting.

So what I can do is take and either stitch right along one of these seams here, which would be known as stitch in the ditch, because the ditches are a little indentation from our seam, or I can line my presser foot up with any one of these seams, and then I'm stitching over a little ways from that. So what I'm going to do is align my presser foot up, the side of my presser foot up with the edge of one of these seams and just do some straight lines. So we'll get this under here, move my machine just towards me slightly, make it a little bit easier. Again. I've got the edge of my presser foot lined up and all I'm going to do is stich.

Took a couple back stitches to hold, and know I'm just going to stitch right across everything, just doing straight lines. Quilting is simply just quilting through, stitching through all of your layers. So it doesn't really matter if you're doing fancy shapes, fancy designs. If you're just starting out to quilting, just keep it simple. Do something like some straight lines.

So I can bring this over here and you can see I just have straight line. Now I could take, and I could again, line my presser foot up. Maybe I want to align my presser foot up with this line I just did and do another line. I could move my lines apart. Maybe I want two inches or something apart, two and a half inches.

I could use my ruler use one of my removable fabric markers, draw lines and quotes along those. Again I mentioned before that we can stitch right in the indentation of one of these seams. And so I'm just going to demonstrate that right now real quick as well. Now, as with most stitches and things out there, there is yet another special foot for that. You can actually get what's called a stitch in the ditch foot.

And it has a little guide that you can line up with the ditch that you're stitching in to help you stay lined up. But I find that I can also do the same thing With my regular presser foot. I find them more things that I can master with just my regular presser foot really makes it easier because I don't have to change my foot if I'm changing, maybe the design I'm quilting, I can just keep the same foot on and do a variety of different stitches. Take that back off, show you. All I've done is stitched right in that ditch and you can't really see it.

And that means you've done a good job, because you're trying to get your stitching to be hidden in those, the fold there of that seam. If you could see it, that means that you might've gotten off just a little bit when you were doing your stitching. So you definitely want to, if you're going to do the stitch in the ditch, just go slow, make sure you're really going right along those lines. And that's an option you can do as well. So we can do any version of straight lines that we want, or we can do free motion or use some of our quilting templates that we have.

So I'm going to show you one of these quilting templates real quick, just because you can do one of these quilting templates and keep your regular presser foot on your machine and still keep your feed dogs engaged. So really you're still doing regular stitching. So I'm going to take my design here and I can just use my fabric pencil here. And it's just a stencil. All I'm doing is drawing on my fabric and I wouldn't necessarily need such a dark color with this fabric as this marker is, but it'll give you an idea of how easy it is to see when you're stitching.

And if it is removable, it doesn't really matter how dark your lines are because you can just remove them. Now you might want to check, use a scrap piece of fabric and make sure that your pencil really is removable on whatever type of fabric you're using, before you actually go and draw all these lines on, because you'd hate for them to not actually come off. So what I can do now is there's the little spots in my stencil where everything doesn't quite connect. I can just go ahead and free hand those little lines in and you can see I have part of my design that I can stitch right there. Now, if you look at this, this has really gentle sloping lines, and then we have corners that we're going to turn, but all of this can be done moving in one direction, then rotating our fabric and moving in another direction.

So I can actually keep my machine set up just like it would for regular stitching. Leave the feed dogs engaged and just stitch. So what I'm going to do is put my fabric under here and I'm just going to start stitching right along one of these lines that I drew. Again, I'm getting close to one of these pins, but because the head part of the pin is flat my presser foot will go right over it, it's nowhere near my needle, so I don't have to worry about that. And I can just continue stitching.

I'm not having to really change directions drastically so I can keep those feed dogs engaged, everything just moves nice and smoothly. Then I get up to one of these corners. I will just treat this like any other corner that I'm sewing, or if you've never turned a corner in sewing before what you do is you leave your needle in the down position, lift up your presser foot and rotate your fabric. Now I'm going to continue along the next line that I've drawn. I get to another corner, same thing.

I'm going to leave my needle down, lift up my presser foot. And rotate again. I got one more corner to do. I can lift it up, rotate. And now I'm back to one of those long curved seams.

And so what I'm doing here with all this other excess fabric is I'm just keeping it out of the way. I'm just rolling it like that. And I'm holding it out of the way with my right hand. Okay I'm gonna keep stitching right along that line I drew right up to where I started. And then I'm going to go ahead and stop right there and I'll bring it out so you can see.

So what I've done is just stitched right along those lines. You can tell the line I stitched on and the line I haven't switched on yet because it still is kind of poofy here. So you can see how you can draw one of those templates onto your fabric like this and still use all of the same sewing practices as piecing and actually work on doing your quilting designs like this and really make some nice, intricate designs. Now I'm going to take a quick break and change out the foot on my machine and then I'm going to show you some free motion stitching. So I've changed out the presser foot on my machine.

I took off my regular presser foot, and put on my free motion foot. I have set my machine for free motion stitching, and I have disengaged the feed dogs. Now that might be a little bit different on your machine as to how that works but normally there's a little lever somewhere near the base of your machine that you just push and it disengages those feed dogs. This is going to allow you the option of how you want to move your fabric underneath your presser foot. So I may decide that, I have some designs already in my fabric.

I have some flowers leave, some other shapes and I want to actually follow or mirror one of those shapes. I can do that with free motion quilting. So I am just going to stitch like I normally would but I need to remember that I am in charge of moving the fabric as I go. So if I just sit and keep stitching like this, well then my machine is not actually moving my fabric for me. I need to do that on my own.

So again all I have to do is I'm the one that needs to move my stitching as I go. So I'm going to make sure I have it on a straight stitch. And I'm just going to go right around my flower. And I'm just moving it every time. And that's why you want to use this foot versus your regular presser foot.

Is that every time the needle lifts up you can see that the foot is lifting up slightly as well. So I can just keep going around my flower. Get to the end of that block. Maybe you want to continue over. There's another flower on this side and go out and around these pedals here, and I'm going fairly slow because I know that that's the pace that's easy for me to move my fabric at.

I want to make sure that I can move my fabric the same pace that I'm moving, that the needle is moving. So if I floor my machine, that means I need to move my fabric really fast. Whereas the slower I go with my presser foot the slower I need to move my fabric. So all I've done is just some simple outlines around some flowers. I've gone around some petals of flowers and now I can actually do, maybe I want to do some swirls or echo these polka dots I have here.

I can also do that with some free motion quilting. So I'm just going to take and make some little swirling sections right here in this little triangle I have. So again, everything is still set up for free motion quilting, and I'm ready to just stitch some spirals. So I'm going to go around. I may want to stop and clip my thread.

So I don't stitch over it and I can just keep going. I'm just creating a little spiral then maybe if I want my spiral to come down over here, do that, and I can either stop and can keep creating little S's like that. Or I could just make my spiral move out and over to another spot. Make another little design here, maybe come back out, really with free motion quilting, you are in charge of whatever you want your design to look like. So I could be making spirals, I could try to make my own flowers because I know that's what's on my other fabric and I can make flowers maybe on the yellow fabric, maybe do polka dots or spirals or something on my pattern fabric to tie everything together.

But it's really up to me with free motion quilting what I want it to look like. If you've made a couple of those practice, easy beginner blocks, just layer up maybe a small little section, and just try out a couple of different options. Leave your regular presser foot on and try just some straight line quilting. You can then use those seams maybe on your nine patch and try the stitch in the ditch quilting. Or if you really want to have some fun and play around, put a free motion foot on there, disengage your feed dogs and draw your own designs on your fabric as you go, you can quilt it however you'd like.

When it comes to quilting, the only thing you want to keep in mind is that you don't want to have large sections that don't have any quilting at all. So you can see I've done all my examples down here, I couldn't just be done at this point, because this whole half over here needs some sort of quilting. In general if you make a fist and you lay it on your quilt, you need to have quilting that touches all sides of your hand. That's the biggest distance you should ever have between quilting. And the bigger the distance, the more chance there is for your layers to come apart.

So you want to make sure you have quilting evenly spaced over your entire project. So make up just a fun little sample like this, layer it together, put all your basting pins in place, and just practice all these fun, different techniques and find out what kind of quilting it is you like. Then once you have it quilted, we'll be ready to trim everything up and then put a binding on our project.