Showing posts with label Dot-to-Dot Quilting. Show all posts

Thursday, April 02, 2026

A Orange Scrappy FMQ Finish

Allô and welcome 😊 Another week has flown by! It's now April and still pretty cold but above freezing during the day. My backyard is a mess but the birds and critters are finding all kinds of goodies under the melting snow. There is a lot of nesting activities - I love it!

FMQ the orange scrappy quilt

The free motion quilting (FMQ) is finished! I did end up doing a lot of dot-to-dot as taught by Angela Walters.

FMQ orange scrappy quilt

I think that the FMQ went so well because I used a FriXion pen and ruler to mark the lines before FMQ it. The whole point of dot-to-dot is that you can look from one point to another and FMQ straight lines between them. Unfortunately my unmarked lines are often very wobbly. Another advantage of marking is that it gives me time to think about what I'll be FMQ. When I don't mark the lines, I just tend to wing it...and that's not always the best solution.

Marked lines before FMQ

Marked lines and FMQ

The top border of the quilt is wider than the other borders. I used a real stencil to mark the lines. For the other borders, I just FMQ large loops. You can see these on the back of the quilt in the photo below.

FMQ the borders

Now I just have to trim the quilt and bind it. I'm not sure where it's going but I'm glad that it's almost done.

A full back view - before all the borders were FMQ

Another look at the quilt, on a windy day

April's One Monthly Goal

I didn't realise that the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL was held in 2023! It's been finished almost 3 years ago. I would like to give it my friends this year. The quilt measures 68" x 65" and will require a lot of FMQ!

Rainbow Neighbourhood flimsy

For April, my goal is to sandwich it and start on the quilting-in-the-ditch. I think that this is doable if life cooperates 😁

What I learned

Marking the lines of FMQ designs helps me by letting me know where I'm going. Although they are far from perfect, by following a marked line they tend to turn out straighter.
As I mentioned, marking the lines means that I've planned what I want to quilt, so my FMQ is more deliberate.
Also, when I'm too tired to FMQ, I can still mark the lines so that I know what to do the next day.
I will definitely be doing this when I can. Using this type of FMQ means that the quilt is less densely quilted - a good thing for baby quilts.
I hope that I'll be able to take some nice outdoor photos when the quilt is bound and finished. Right now everything outside is filthy - not a place for a baby quilt!

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

Kate from Life in Pieces finished quilting-as-you-go her Kate's Choice quilt. It started as Grandmother's Choice - a quilt along about women's rights. When it became a UFO, Kate decided to choose her own blocks and called it Kate's Choice. It's so lovely. You'll want to read her post for more info. I've been looking forward to her finish since Grandmother's Choice is also one of my UFOs.

Kate's finished Kate's Choice quilt

Details of Kate's quilt-as-you-go and her border

Gail from Quilting Gail finished her SAHRR 2026 for the parade. It's so colourful. Have a look at some of the FMQ details. She did some ruler quilting and FMQ.

Gail's finished SAHRR 2026

Details of Gail's FMQ and ruler work quilting

Janine of Rainbow Hare was able to finish her SAHRR 2026 on time for the parade, even if she wasn't able to join in much. After deciding that the quilt would be a playmat for the children, the quilt came together nicely!

Janine's SAHRR 2026 finish

Janine's quilt - a colourful playmat

Brenda of Songbird Designs custom quilted her SAHRR 2026 finish. She used ruler work and FMQ. You'll want to check out her post and look at this quilt in detail!

Brenda's custom quilted SAHRR 2026

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, February 06, 2020

Free Motion Mavericks

Hi! Welcome to week 266 of the Free Motion Mavericks linking party!

A production of quilted journal covers

A lovely neutral cover

If birds can have their own special words for groups, then I choose a "production" for a group of quilted journal covers.😊

The very first one!

My own colourful
agenda cover

The newest members of the Production of journal covers

Using dot-to-dot quilting

A friend from the quilt guild gave me several bags of scraps. Some were much more than scraps since she decided to get rid of fabric that she would never use.

Well, I might not use those fabrics either, but for this project, I used the quilt panel fabric on the back and sewed the front of the journal cover using the bobbin thread.

I really like the effect of the dot-to-dot quilting without really having the fabric delineate the blocks. Once again I used variegated thread in the bobbin.

FMQ on this panel to make the
yellow journal cover

The supplies for making the
yellow journal cover

This fun coffee fabric has been FMQ. Now to make the Coffee Lover's journal cover.

Aren't these great? If they look
familiar it's because I've made a
few hexies with similar fabric

The blue-green polka dots will look
great as a background fabric

An update (February 9, 2020): My Coffee Lover's journal cover is finished. I'd rather update this post than write up another one, so here it is!

Coffee Lover's journal cover

The back of the Coffee Lover's journal cover

I just love the inside of this one!

Tall Tales Book block UFO

One Monthly Goal for February

Tall Tales Book block UFO

This month I will finish one of the Tall Tales Book blocks that I started making during my holidays last fall. You can check out the links below.

Oops, it would seem that I forgot to link up to the February OMG goal link up. Oh well, I still want to get these two done!

Related links

Finishing up One Monthly Goal - OMG, January 31, 2020
More quilted gifts, an OMG and a Christmas runner, December 26, 2019
Making a journal cover with practice piece, December 14, 2019
Free Motion Quilted Gifts with Christina Cameli on Bluprint
Tall Tale Book blocks - September 25, 2019 and October 10, 2019

Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Let's see what's going on out there! Friday Foto Fun, Beauties Pageant, Off the Wall Friday, Put Your Foot Down, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Colour and Inspiration Tuesday, Monday Making, What I Made Monday, and DrEAMi with Sandra at mmm quilts!

Free Motion Mavericks

We've had some great projects linked up last time - thanks so much for joining us. I'd like to give a special mention to Muv of Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing, my Free Motion Mavericks partner. Her free motion quilted piece, A Lane in May was undeniably frustrating to make, but I believe that it was ultimately a wonderful project. 😊 If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out.