Friday, May 17, 2013

Border Quilting Tutorial

Here's another quilting tutorial based on what I did on the Pink Fairy Quilt.

 We're talking border treatment today.
 First let me start with my sewing machine set up.  I should have mentioned this in the circles post.  Sorry.  I am using the Free Motion foot (or darning foot) that fits on my machine.  Feed dogs down.  I have an extended work surface that fits on my machine and on top of that I use a Sew Slip silicon mat.  On this quilt I have a variegated cotton Gutermann thread on the top and Superior Threads Bottom Line in the bobbin.


Let's get started on the quilting.
 Your two edge lines of quilting.  Just sew a random back and forth line.  Maybe angle it in or out as you desire.  This is all done by 'eye-balling', no pre-marking anything.  Quilt the top line first, from the inside out.
 Starting at the outer edge go in for the bottom line, come back up a bit, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inches and draw a new wavy line from edge to edge (blue).
 Travel up the previously stitched line and follow your wavy line back down.
 Continue on until the section is all filled in.
 Next section: start at the outer edge of the quilt, and mirror your previously quilted (red) wavy line.
 Quilt to, or close to your border line, travel a bit and head back up.  Again echoing that wavy line.
 Do this until you're tired of it your happy with how far you've gone.
 Now repeat part one, quilting lines in the opposite direction.
 I found it was a good and easy way to get the border filled in in a reasonable amount of time.  For something like this, you don't need to worry about marking, and perfection isn't going to be noticed, or not noticed anyway.  Just stand back and appreciate the texture.



2 comments:

JoyceLM said...

Great tutorial - thanks for sharing.

janequiltsslowly said...

Great tutorial. I like the way you illustrate the quilting patterns. Do you quilt all the horizontal guidelines before you do the fill or do you sew a new guideline when you go to the next section?