Lots of Free-Motion Quilting!

Back in 2008 I looked at the quilt that had won the “Best Machine Quilting” award and I decided that I wanted to win it in our 2010 show…..and I did!!

Several years before I had been given a pre-printed quilt top. My friend Elsie had bought it and set it up for hand quilting. She worked on it for a few weeks and decided that it wasn’t for her. She took out the quilting and gifted the top to me. Now I KNEW that I wasn’t going to hand quilt it but thought that it might be a good project for machine quilting.

I first decided that I wanted to make it a bit fancier so added a Trapunto layer to the back. I don’t have photos from the process, but basically, I put batting behind the top and “quilted” around the elements that I wanted to puff up. I used a wash-out thread to do the sewing so that this initial quilting would disappear.

Next, I carefully cut out all of the excess batting so that the only parts with the extra batting were those that I wanted to puff.

I layered it up and started quilting, using my Viking machine.

Since the printed design was pretty simple I added additional quilting lines wherever I thought it was needed, including turning the outside squares into a “Greek-Key Design”, and adding lots of stippled areas to help the Trapunto really shine.

I found the actual quilting process to be very relaxing! It was sweet to not worry about what pattern to use and, since there weren’t lots of seams on the top, the quilt sandwich was smaller and easier to get under my machine.

And THIS is how it turned out……

Here are some close up photos…

When I have taught FMQ classes, I always say that the most important thing is to…

PRACTICE….PRACTICE…..PRACTICE!!

…and this whole-cloth quilt was a sweet way to do it!!!