Many people find quilting the most challenging part of the quilt-making process. In this post, I will give you some ideas on how to quilt the Spring 22 Baby Quilt, but I want to encourage you to have a go and finish off this gorgeous project.
How to set up for quilting success
I am sure I am not alone in wanting to quilt every quilt I made like an award-winning professional quilter. However, I am not a professional quilter and do not have a long arm machine, so I approach my quilting within the bounds of my capabilities. This is what I encourage you to do. Work within your comfort level until YOU feel ready to move on. Pushing ourselves to do different things is great, but that will only be successful when we are secure in quilting as it is today.
Quilting Pattern No. 1 – Walking Foot
A simple and super effective way to quilt is to create wavey lines using a walking foot across a quilt. You should increase your stitch length to around three and sew from one side of the quilt, creating gentle curves.
The curves shouldn’t cross and be packed at least 1 ½” apart. This pattern is my ultimate backup as it always looks good and is easy to do.
Tip – To keep your wavy lines either horizontal or vertical, whichever you have chosen, place two lengths of masking tape across the quilt approximately 10” apart in the same direction as your stitch. These will guide your wavey lines and can be moved across the quilt as you progress.
Quilting Pattern No.2 Walking Foot or Ruler Foot Quilting
Whilst this design looks involved, it is a simple chevron pattern where the depth of the chevon varies. This is a far less dense quilting approach than Pattern No.2 above. It will sew up faster but require accuracy where the sewn lines touch and turn.
To explain how to create this design, refer to the picture below. Begin with sewn chevrons one down the quilt where the first stitched line is shown in the picture as a red line, and the following sewn line is a mirror image of the first, shown in the photos as a green line. This is repeated all the way across. The blue and pink lines indicate the following pattern repeat. When this is complete, turn the quilt by ninety degrees and repeat.
Quilting Pattern No.3 Free Motion Quilting
This pattern is based on a bounce-back feather design. If you have never drawn or sewn bounce back feathers, you can find a tutorial for them within my complete Doodle Challenge Video Set. Alternatively, next week, I will publish a mini-tutorial on bump-back feathers.
The quilt is stabilised by quilting in the ditch around each star and the first (colourful) border. The feature squares are also quilted around in the ditch. The bounce-back feathers are drawn around the squares formed in the corners of your original blocks. The stabilising lines will take most of the time to quilt this pattern as the bounce-back feathers are swift t complete.
I hope you have enjoyed the project. It has been a pleasure to share my Spring 2022 baby quilt. Please send pictures of quilts made to me at mail@gillymacdesigns.com. It is always fabulous to see the creativity out in the sewing world.
