Machine Quilting

We are busy making blocks for our Sampler Quilt as well as producing cloth book covers and pages.  These will both need some quilting or embroidery at some stage and I imagine that most people will want to use some machine embroidery.

We haven't done much practice on machine embroidery in preparation for the quilting that is necessary so it would be a good idea to have a go at it and get some practice in before our next Quilters session.

Reminder: for free motion embroidery or quilting drop the feed dogs, put the stitch length to 0, use a hoop if not working with stabiliser or wadding, put the hoop the opposite way round from hand embroidery i.e. with the fabric resting on the base of the machine.

So try making all kinds of shapes - some curved and some angular.  I am told that different people are better at one or the other so see which one you get on best with.  For me it's curved shapes - I always find them easier than angles and quite relaxing to do.

Adjust your upper tension only - not a good idea (unless you are really experienced) to mess about with the bobbin tension just yet.  Start off with it set at the regular tension, about 4 and then adjust it as you do the try-outs.  You will find as you change the upper tension (needle tension) that your thread will show more on the front or on the back according to your setting.

These images are of the back and the front and I have been moving the tension wheel about quite a lot to see what would happen to the thread.  It is fun to try out the different ways your machine will react as you go from a very low upper tension e.g. 0.5 to a very high one e.g. 7 or 8.

Use cotton quilting thread and use two different colours for practice so you can see how the tension adjustments are working i.e. one colour in the needle and a very different colour in the bobbin.

For these experiments I used green on top and red in the bobbin.

Use your foot control to change the speed of the stitching and see how that affects the length of the stitches.

Use your hand movements to see how the speed and direction affect the stitches on both back and front of the work.

You will notice that as you change direction it does alter the tension and using two different colour threads will make this more obvious.

After practicing quite a lot with the hoop change over to a quilt sandwich i.e. wadding in between two fabrics either tacked or pinned together.

I have used some silk as a top fabric here so I can see the effect better.  You can see I have used a  chalk pencil to draw some lines to give me some guidance and ideas for my quilting.

It is still free motion but the lines will help me to get some symmetry into it.  Again this is just practice and a learning curve - not aiming for a work of art!

 As you can see it certainly wasn't a work of art but it did help me to remember how to do stippling.

 But you may not want to use free motion embroidery or quilting.  You may want more order and control so do practice that too.

 You can see the blue sample here (which was part of my course work) is a square of fabric separated up into small blocks and different ways of doing quilting with the feed dogs up as in normal sewing.  I have used the machine's guide sometimes, others were drawn,  I used my walking foot throughout to give it stability.

It's much tidier and this may appeal more to some people than free motion.  However practice is essential here as well so that is the advice for today practice; practice; practice.