Free Motion Script Session 5: Add Interest With Additional Passes, Thread Painting and Flourishes

On our first pass, when we were doing our writing, it was important that our quilt or our piece of fabric was oriented properly. Now, at this point, what we're going to be doing is overlining or lining over and stitching over and over and thickening and doing all these other things. And it doesn't matter what direction we're writing in because we're not really writing, we're simply stitching. And so as long as we can see what we're doing, it doesn't matter what direction we're stitching in. So I'm going to start with this W.

And I'm going to thicken up this W a little differently than I did the last one. I'm going to get rid of that thread so that I don't stitch over it a couple dozen times and stitch it in. Okay. So that's my second pass on that W. You can see what I'm doing, I'm adding these sort of triangular shapes into this, which I think might be kind of interesting.

And because the W is its own entity, it's not really attached to the rest of the word "where", I'm going to go ahead and finish the W real quickly. And then move back and forth in both directions to fill in that space that I created. And tidy up as I go. Remembering that I can always add more but I will have a very hard time taking stitches out. So I go with less is more first and then add as desired later.

Filling in those big wide open areas by going back and forth. And tidying up on my way. Your thread will break when you're doing this technique. Because of that fill-in that you're doing, sometimes you're stitching right on top of that thread. And basically it's not really breaking, you're actually cutting it with your needle.

So don't freak out if it happens here and there. It's nothing wrong with your machine, it's nothing wrong with your needle. It's that you're stitching through it and it's just going to happen. And because you're stitching through it so many times you don't have to worry about nodding off or where you ended. You're going to be going over it anyway.

Okay, so now I'm getting down to the bottom of the Ws and you can see how different this has become. So here was how I put this little triangular shape down here, and then I added the flourish at the bottom of that and just really added a nice, interesting piece. So I'm going to go ahead and add a little swirl here at the end, too, to this W. And then fill in. And that fill-in is just like doing thread painting, that moving back and forth.

And that final step is always tightening up those edges. I'm on our final fill-in on the W. And we're done with the W. So look at that. Isn't that fabulous?

Very, very cool. I always get so tickled with myself when I do this. It's just so much fun. So now everything else is going to be a little simpler but it's still going to be thickened up and have areas of fullness to it and little bits of flourishes here and there. So I'm going to start by putting a little bit more of a curve on the end of this H where there was no curve.

Cause you can always add, like I said before, it's just really hard to take it off. Now I'm going to do some repetition. Because I added some thick sort of triangular shapes to the W, I'm going to do that at the top of long loops. So I just did that on the top of that H. I'm going to pull down and make that H not so hard on the end and add a little bit of a curve to it.

And what I'm going to concentrate on is adding basically some fullness in the arcs or the curves of the letters. A, because it looks good, and B, because it's easier than adding fullness to the straight lines. Adding a curve to the top of this R, where it was actually a kind of a harsh stopping point, will make it a little bit more soft. So I want you to listen to the machine. And if you have a machine that you can set the speed for, then set it on a speed that you're comfortable moving at all the time, and then just floor your machine.

If not, then you want to have your machine sound the same all the time. Like mine is sounding the same, it's running at the same speed all the time. That's going to help you be consistent in your stitching. Okay. So now we have this beautiful word, "where".

And you can see how gorgeous that is. It is just such a fabulous, fabulous way to add some really fabulous beauty to your work. I'm going to go ahead and finish up this and show it to you when I'm done. But I also want you to see the back side. The back side should look just as beautiful as the front because it's going to be on the back of your quilt.

You'll go through and remove all your threads. But you can see that it is just as beautiful as the front side of your quilt is. And so you're going to have that wonderful, of course, two sided-ness. It's going to be backwards, but that's cool. So next time you're thinking about making a quilt for a loved one or somebody that you really want to impart some special meaning to, think about writing on that quilt.

I think you're going to find it very, very enjoyable. To make it more enjoyable to do, just practice. Practice with the writing beforehand, practice during the stitching and realize that there is no mistake. And that's one of the really, really, really, really groovy things about this technique is if you stitch where you don't want a stitch, you simply thicken up that area and you take care of that quote unquote mistake and it doesn't read as a mistake at all. So practice writing and learn to do it on your quilts.

You'll have a lot of fun with it.