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It depends on my mood, how much time I have, and what the quilt needs to be completed. I usually use this design edge to edge but sometimes I will use loops in the quilt center with something different in the borders. Loops are probably my all-time go-to design. But I wouldn’t recommend straight lines on your Civil War reproduction quilt. Straight lines look great quilted on anything modern as well as children’s quilts. Now imagine what this table runner will look like after I wash it and it crinkles up beautifully! You’ve just got to try straight lines! And if you look closely, you’ll see that my lines aren’t really all that straight, but by repeating the lines over and over about the same distance apart, it looks pretty awesome. Here’s a great example of what straight lines can do for your quilt - this is only the backside and it’s unwashed! Cool, huh? Straight lines add a lot of texture. A walking foot or even-feed foot moves the top and bottom layers under the needle at the same time so your sewing lines are less likely to pucker and you won’t get those annoying tucks on the back of your quilt. If you haven’t tried quilting simple straight lines on a project, it’s way past time you did! To get your lines relatively straight, you will probably want to use a walking foot or an even-feed foot on your sewing machine.
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Here are some of my other free motion quilting favorites. Wiggly lines are just one way you can quilt your project. Here’s a little video I put together a while back about some basic free motion quilting skills and information. Okay, let’s say you want to machine quilt your quilt yourself (sorry, I’m not into hand quilting, so you’re stuck with machine quilting). You can see last week’s post “Basic Quilting Skills for Beginners: Batting, Backing, and Preparing a Quilt for Quilting” to help you with your preparation. Next, are you planning to quilt it yourself? Or pay someone to quilt it for you? Depending on your answer here, you may need to prepare your quilt differently. The first thing you need to consider after you complete the quilt top is what kind of quilting are you going to do? Machine quilting? Hand quilting? Or even tying/tacking? If you’re a beginner, how are you supposed to know what to quilt or how to quilt your quilt to finish it? On our Villa Rosa Designs Rose Cards, we take it a step further and say “Quilt and bind as desired.” Gee, that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? NOT! But what does it really mean? It’s a designer’s way to say quilt your quilt any way you want to.
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If you’re new to quilting, you might have seen the phrase “quilt as desired” at the end of some of your quilt patterns. Needless to say, I look forward to the cooler fall months when I feel more productive in my studio and I get excited again about new projects. Yup, here’s my dungeon! LOL! Cue the creepy music, please! Second, my Sewing Dungeon, er….Studio, is not air conditioned, so for a couple of months out of each year, it’s hard to sew with sweat dripping down into my eyes and onto my projects. First, of course, it’s summer and I want to be busy doing other summer-y things and going places. I don’t know if you’re like me or not, but I tend to quilt less in the summer months. Here’s hoping we all have a productive autumn season - especially with our quilting. Happy Thursday to you! Leaf Background Image by on Freepik