Showing posts with label Bottom Line thread. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2026

SAHRR , FMQ, and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome 😊 There are so many acronyms in this blog title - I feel like I could be back at work! So my Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR) is almost a flimsy (quilt top) and this week I found calm by doing some free motion quilting (FMQ) on my orange scrappy baby quilt. It was a busy and productive week, and I'm glad that you're visiting!

Almost a SAHRR flimsy

Here is the top border added to the SAHRR piece. It went relatively well until I added the last piece. I was shocked when I discovered that it was about 2½" short since I was so sure that it would fit. At least it was easy to add extra fabric. You can see in the photo below that I gave it an extra inch or so for good measures. Everything will get trimmed before adding the final side borders.

SAHRR quilt with pieced side and top borders

I now have 3 blocks to add to the bottom and will do roughly what I did for the top border.

I had originally made this small block by sewing the smaller hour-glass blocks together. Unfortunately it didn't really look like hour-glass blocks.

Original small hour-glass blocks
sewn together

So I researched hour-glass quilts and found that they are usually made with a couple of colours and are set in different directions. Then I pulled apart my little block and made four more small hour-glass blocks with a purple background. I placed it within a block - so now I have the two larger blocks to set and then add the bottom border.

Three last blocks for the bottom

Next steps: The parade starts next week, so I'll have the flimsy done by then.

Sew the last three blocks into a bottom border and

Add the 4" final border.

Add the outer side borders. I don't trust my estimated measurements, so I'll see if it's the size I want once the side outer borders are on. 😕

FMQ a Scrappy Baby Quilt

I really needed a break from the SAHRR, so I got back to the scrappy baby quilt. I finished stitching it in-the-ditch, and then started FMQ. I remembered that I wanted a dot-to-dot quilting (à la Angela Walters) but somehow forgot about the dot-to-dot part and just started with Angela's Shape by Shape designs.

FMQ the scrappy quilt

The FMQ is really difficult to see because I used 100 wt. white Bottom Line thread. It worked well and I could see most of the quilting as I was doing it.

FMQ using mostly straight lines which I drew before quilting

FMQ details

Backing where you can see the stitch-in-the-ditch and some FMQ

When I realised that I wasn't actually doing dot-to-dot quilting, I took out my FMQ journal - I have attached all of Angela Walter's diagrams in it. I really want the FMQ to be light. This will be perfect.

Project Quilting 17.6 - a Happy Handful

I remembered to check on Project Quilting (PQ) and since it was a quick make, I got out some scraps and made this. The theme is to make something small enough to hold in one hand.

A handful of cuteness for Project Quilting 😍

The first block I made was the centre wonky snowball in the middle. I added pink squares around it, pieced some batting and used a cute Winnie-the-Poo fabric underneath. I put my top fabric wrong side up for the pillow case finish (it's supposed to be right side up!) but since I didn't have any specific size in mind for the piece, I just cut around the stitching, turned it right side up and re-sewed the pillow case finish.

I used my walking foot to quilt it with straight lines. A quick and fun finish!

A quick finish that I can hold in one hand!

What I learned

I was tired of working on putting the SAHRR quilt together. It felt like work, not fun, so I knew that I had to do something else.
I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the flimsy by the parade (which I'm sure will run for longer than a day!)
It was calming to do some FMQ on the baby quilt. I'm trying to keep the FMQ light. I'm also doing a lot of marking of straight lines - it's worth the effort if it means keeping my lines straight!
Making the PQ mini was nice, especially using those light spring fabrics instead of the dark ones in my SAHRR.
Not having a plan meant that I could wing it, including just making the mat smaller instead of un-stitching it to redo the pillow case finish.
You may have noticed the snow underneath my Handful of Cuteness project. Yes, it's back....Happy Spring Equinox!
The mat is very cute and I'm using it already in the living room under my stitching supplies. Thanks to Kim and Trish for another fun season of Project Quilting!

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it!

Here are the posts from last week that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and feel free to grab the button.

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts is also an Angela Walter's fan. She FMQ her large open spaces panel with all kinds of wonderful FMQ designs. You'll want to head over there and look at all of her detailed photos by clicking on them to enlarge them. Wow!

Kat's FMQ Open Spaces Challenge quilt

Details of Open Spaces FMQ by Kat

Sally of Crafts, Caves and Cooking made this insulated pizza box for last week's Project Quilting Challenge - My Compliments. Those colours really are complementary and what a practical project!

Sally's very practical pizza box

Gail from Quilting Gail made a lovely red and white baby quilt to donate for March's Red Rainbow Scraps Challenge. It's so cute! It was quilted using straight lines.

Gail's red and white baby quilt

Straight line quilting by Gail

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts made a lovely baby quilt for a co-worker. The fabrics in the quilt are so cute!

Preeti's lovely baby quilt

Cute fabric in Preeti's baby quilt

Melva of Melva Loves Scraps made a great t-shirt quilt for a client who's son is turning 21.

21st birthday t-shirt quilt made by Melva

T-shirt quilt quilted by Melva with diagonal lines

It's now your turn 😍

Thursday, December 21, 2023

T-shirt Quilt Finish on Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 461 of Free Motion Mavericks. I delivered the quilt to my nephew last night at 10:30 so that he could pack it up to bring to Denmark. He lives down the street so it wasn't a long journey. He and his roommate are tall men, so they helped me take a few quick pictures of the quilt. Thanks guys!😊

A Finished T-shirt Quilt

It's done and since I drove my nephew to the airport... I know that it's way to Copenhagen ✈

A finished queen size t-shirt quilt

I'm not going to go through all of the blocks, mostly because since I don't have the quilt with me, I can't really see from the pictures what I quilted on them! 😎 Here are just a few highlights.

I had quilted stars in the sashing of this t-shirt but wasn't sure what or with what thread to quilt the t-shirt. In the image below this one, you can see the threads that I used. I FMQ with the neon orange while I originally used the variegated thread to zig-zag stitch the "14" panel from the back of the shirt to the front.

Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) the bright orange t-shirt

Threads used to stitch the t-shirt

On the next two Ottawa Lions t-shirts, I FMQ the sashing with some dot-to-dot diamonds and other designs within the squares and rectangles. It was good to do something different.

Using dot-to-dot FMQ in the sashing

More dot-to-dot FMQ

The last t-shirt quilted was the New York one. For part of the sashing, I FMQ some lightning bolt designs. I then quilted the contour of the buildings, signs and statue. I used a pink thread to fill in the sky.

FMQ the New York t-shirt

FMQ the Border

I wasn't sure what to FMQ in the two side borders. I knew that it had to fill in the space quickly without being too fiddly. I found the design in Angela Walter's second book, Shape by Shape Collection 2. She calls it the Serpentine Clusters. It has three serpentine lines and then a row of feathers.

Angela Walter's Serpentine Clusters design in the two borders

Squaring the Quilt

I am accuracy challenged at the best of times. With a t-shirt quilt, you just make it up as you go along since most blocks are different sizes. It's difficult to square things when you can't really measure from anything. All I could do was make each side straight-ish and then see if the quilt could be folded in half properly.

Straightening the border sides

The quilt didn't past the folding or wonky test. Since these are just the borders, I knew that I could adjust them as required.

Folding the quilt lengthwise

Trimming the edges

I put together strips of the Kona Solids that I had used for sashing in the quilt. I was lucky that the sashing also used 2½" strips. I was able to use many of them for the binding and didn't have to do too much cutting.

Cutting strips after squaring the quilt

Strips of binding ready to be sewn together

I then used Quilting Jet Girl's Tips for Making / Planning a Scrappy Binding. It was very useful (see Related links below). I needed the binding colour used around the quilt to be a different colour from the fabric it was going to be attached to. Otherwise, the binding tends to recede and looks like there is no binding.

I put the quilt on our king size bed and placed each strip down where I wanted. Then I very carefully stitched them in the correct order and side. It was then time to attach the binding strip to the back of the quilt.

Attaching the binding strip to the back of the quilt

Finally I turned the binding over and stitched it using one of my fancy stitches. It was the first time that I did this, and I really like the result. My wavy stitching pattern isn't straight but it doesn't show as much as a straight stitching line that is wonky! 😁

Stitching down the binding with a fancy stitch

Here's a couple more pictures of the finished quilt. I hope that my niece will take some so that I can post them.

Part of the finished quilt

The best pictures I could get of the finished quilt

What I learned

FMQ a quilt that did not have batting was different. There is no doubt that the quilt would have been too heavy for my niece with batting.
The FMQ went well. I only had issues with tension a couple of times. I'm not sure what happened but when I re-threaded the machine, everything was fine.
All of the thread used for FMQ was polyester. The bobbin thread was Superior Thread's Bottom Line (60wt). I used two more colours of Bottom Line. There was also 4 colours of Madeira polyneon, 6 colours of Glide polyester thread and then the neon Orange polyester thread from Coats (I think). They also needed the same tension, so that was great.
As I mentioned, I used Quilting Jet Girl's Tips for Making / Planning a Scrappy Binding. I know that the colour of the binding needs to be a different colour from the fabric that it's attached to, otherwise the binding tends to recede and it ends up looking like there is no binding.
I knew that I wouldn't have time to hand-stitch the binding so I found a video, "How To Bind a Quilt on a Sewing Machine with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star". It taught me what I needed to know and except for one corner, the stitching went really well.
I decided to use the wavy stitch from my machine since I knew that a straight stitch line would not be straight. I also wanted something a little bit wide to attach the binding well.
Now that my niece's t-shirt quilt is done, I can focus on Christmas 🎄🎅 and other projects.
I'm also looking forward in participating in the usual end-of-year blogging posts. See you then!

Free Motion Mavericks

What wonderful quilts we had last week. I haven't visited everyone yet, but I will! 😊

Denise of the Quiltery (Love of Geese) made this really lovely Christmas hanging for both the Virtual Cookie Exchange and the Island Batik Ambassador Celebration Challenge.

Christmas tree and gift wall hanging by Denise

Donnalee finished her first fabric collage piece based on mushrooms that she saw on a trip to New Zealand. What a great finish!

Mushroom fabric collage piece by Donnalee

Melva of Melva Loves Scraps, finished her customer's t-shirt quilt and it's been delivered. It really looks great with the sashing and border fabrics.

Melva's finished customer's t-shirt quilt

Quilting Gail participated in the monthly Classic Car Colour Challenge hosted by Jen @ Patterns by Jen. What a great quilt! I especially like the border piecing. Gail did “Wild” or “Graffiti” quilting in the centre. The outside was quilted using Silly Moon’s Rocket ruler.

Gail's Classic Car Colour Challenge finish

Sandra of mmm quilts made a Christmas tree farm quilt for her daughter. What a wonderful finish! My feathers sure don't look like that! 😀

Sandra's Christmas tree farm quilt

Thanks so much for participating! It's now your turn.

Thursday, November 09, 2023

FMQ the T-shirt Quilt on Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 455 of Free Motion Mavericks. November has brought us snow in Ottawa. It probably won't stay but it is pretty. I guess that it's time to put away the patio furniture! I hope that you're enjoying whatever fall is bringing you.😊

FMQ the first three blocks

Here is a quick look at the blocks. Nothing fancy but fun to quilt!

The first block with snowflakes on the t-shirt

Second block quilted with the Ablaze design

Third block quilted with meandering loops, notes and musical symbols

I'll start at the beginning, after having made the flimsy. I had been procrastinating because the next part was sandwiching the quilt...and you know how I love that (heavy irony here, if you don't know me!) To get motivated, I did a search about FMQ (free motion quilting) a t-shirt quilt. This is what I found out:

Since none of the t-shirts have heavy plastic logos, I would be able to stitch inside the t-shirts.
T-shirt quilts can be quilted as densely or as lightly as you want - it depends on preference and the batting.
T-shirt quilts tend to be very heavy and hot because of the weight of the t-shirts, batting and backing. I can attest to that - my nephew's quilt weighed a ton (but he's a big strapping man)!
The t-shirt quilt doesn't have to include batting. That was a mmm... moment. Since my niece is rather tall and slim with a small frame, did she really want a quilt that would be, for her, like a weighted blanket?
So I asked her. Did she want a hot and heavy quilt, or a light and cooler one?
Cool and light it is! Yeah!!!!

This meant that I didn't have to add batting to the quilt. Since the quilt was on the banister at the top of the stairs, I put the backing face down on the banister and then added the quilt. Sometimes I am brilliant 😎 It helped that I had lots of time to think about it while procrastinating.😁😂

This weekend I sandwiched the quilt over our dining room table. Without the batting, it was the quickest quilt sandwich that I've ever made. Yeah!

Stitch-in-the-ditch

Choosing thread to quilt this queen size quilt is important. From experience, I know that my machine prefers light, synthetic thread over cotton or even polyester. I do have a few cones of Superior Threads' Bottom Line, so that's where I started.

Since my stash of Bottom Line cones is rather small, I looked for other thread that could work. I found 5 colours of Glide thread and 4 colours of Madeira thread. I guess that there's no need to go shopping!😌

Glide, Madeira and Superior Threads' Bottom line cones

I used the tan coloured Bottom Line thread to stitch-in-the-ditch. From the back, it's perfect...but not so great when I miss the ditch in the front! No worries, it won't show once everything is quilted. 😊

Texture at the back, but very little extra colour

Block one

I chose the lovely skiing t-shirt as my first one to FMQ because it was sort of in the middle of the quilt and I have a lovely blue cone of Bottom Line. Since I kept the tan coloured thread in the bottom, this was a great way to see if my tension was good enough to use different colours on the top and bobbin...and it was!

The skiing t-shirt with the light blue sashing

Since my favourite FMQ design is the meandering flower, I stitched this on the side sashing. At the top and bottom, I used another favourite, what I call the "l" and "j" design. Designs that use our writing motor muscles are often the easiest to do since we learned to write a long time ago! 😊

Inside the t-shirt, I added meandering snow flakes and a few lines for the skiing. I used the light blue thread - it almost looks white against the red background. What a fun first block!

A colourful snowy first block!

Block two

After the first block, I did a lot of research using my own FMQ books to find some appropriate designs. The Ablaze design is from Christina Cameli's Step-by-step Free-Motion Quilting. I was looking for something that would connotate speed - so why not a line of fire? I used the little extra row at the top right of the block to FMQ the Ablaze design for the first time.

First image of the Ablaze design

If you click on the first image to make it larger, you might notice what I did when I was cropping the images. I had forgotten to FMQ most of the space between the two crests. Oops!

Finishing up the Ablaze design

The first quilted block of crests

Block three

I decided to quilt the front and back of the Lukas Graham t-shirt next. From the Terrific T-shirt Quilts book, I had found a meandering loops and notes FMQ design. I added a few other musical symbols and quilted all of these in the navy sashing of both t-shirt pieces. In the inside of the t-shirts, I used a white thread to outline the name and then go around the t-shirt and the frames. For the front of the t-shirt I also stitched around the girl's t-shirt.

The front of the t-shirt with stitching inside the t-shirt and sashing

The 2 parts of the Lucas Graham t-shirt and
the first crest block

What I learned

It's different doing FMQ without the batting in the quilt. It's not bad, just different.
I could have done some easier quilting but what's the fun in that? It is good to know however that I can do minimal quilting in the t-shirts if I have to.
I didn't do much FMQ for the back of the Lucas Graham t-shirt. I don't really like how it lies. The next time that I'm using white thread, I'll add a few lines of stitching between the locations to help it lie flat.
My tension was perfect when the bobbin and top thread were both Bottom line. It was a little more finicky when the top thread was a dark Madeira. I haven't used the dark Glide thread but I'm sure that it won't be any fussier. 😊
I'm still having trouble when I FMQ from right to left for more than a few inches. It just seems to be something that my machine doesn't like! At least I was able to turn the quilt around and stitch from bottom to top instead. I just have to remember this.
Sometimes my studio is very hot, especially on a sunny afternoon - so I now wear my shorts to quilt. That really helps and I get to keep wearing shorts!

Free Motion Mavericks

Last week The Joyful Quilter linked up with her ABC (Table) SCRAPS Challenge for November. Look at those light neutral colours and curves! She also managed to include the "Q" and "T" in the mini. Can you spot them? It took me a while.😁