Most people think that stitch in the ditch is the easiest thing you can do with your walking foot, but wavy lines “near” the ditch are much easier to accomplish. Then, when you are ready to tackle straight line quilting, embrace unmarked, uneven line spacing for a quicker finish!
Irregular Parallel Lines on Geese in the Garden – Cool
Make a Quilting Plan
I originally developed the idea to make a quilting plan in my books, then refined my technique so that I could clearly teach it to others in my online video class – The Quilter’s Path. In a nutshell, I like to draw my designs out on an image of the finished quilt top to see how it will look before I quilt the quilt. Below is the quilting plan for both quilts, which is included in my Geese in the Garden quilt pattern.
The reason I like to quilt irregularly spaced, imperfect lines is because I know I’m going to “mess up” anyway, so why not build it into the design? After all – you know what they say: do something once and it could be a “mistake.” But do it two or more times and it’s a design element! Plus, it’s a lot faster to quilt imperfect lines than perfect ones!
Because the prints are so colorful and busy, a variegated thread looks great and helps blend everything together. I chose Stone Washed Denim #3770 for the cool version. Even though it looks like a solid colored thread, it has subtle color changes that will look great on this quilt. Because it’s more on the pastel side, it also blends in with the rest of the prints.
For the warm version, I selected #3840 French Lilac. The purply-pinks blend beautifully and add wonderful texture. When choosing colors, I lay the spool across the quilt and see which color disappears into the quilt the most. If I’m not using and exact matching thread, I’ll usually go a shade lighter rather than darker, as that seems to blend in the best.
To do the actual quilting, first I quilt a series of “anchor” lines to secure the quilt. These can be lines in, or near, the ditch, randomly spaced across the quilt to prevent it from shifting. Then I fill in with additional lines as desired.
Check out this video of me quilting the warm version with a simple wavy line design, following the pieced design of the quilt. I’m using my BERNINA dual feed, which acts just like a walking foot, but allows me to use different feet on my machine.
For the cool version, I used painter’s tape in some of the areas to divid up the space and give me nice, crips lines. When stitching right next to the tape, I have to be careful not to stitch it to the quilt!
Once I’ve established a few anchor lines, I’ll fill in between the lines at random intervals, using the edge of my foot as a guideline for spacing. Here’s another short video of my quilting the cool version, adding more lines in between previously spaced lines:
Finally, I prefer to bind my quilts by hand because I love the clean look it gives to them. Here’s a final video showing how I make each stitch by hand, once it’s been sewn onto the quilt by machine. (See links at the end for my full binding tutorial.)
Here’s a short video showing how I stitch the binding by hand to finish:
I really enjoyed sharing more behind the scenes of making this quilt. To help support the time it takes to create these posts, please use the links below to purchase the pattern, or find my entire pattern and fabric line at shop.ChristaQuilts.com. Many thanks!!
Welcome to my new series where I explain a little more in depth about how I made a recent quilt and share tips to make your sewing and quilting faster and more fun! Today we’ll focus on my Geese in the Garden Quilts made from my Abstract Garden line with Benartex/Contempo.
When I designed Geese in the Garden with it’s radiating diamond-like shapes, my first instinct was to write the pattern by making all of the blocks from Half Square Triangles. However, that would have left a seam in the middle of each block which would have disrupted the fabric print.
I knew I could eliminate some of the seams using the “flip and sew” method but there would still be some seams I didn’t like, and it would have created a lot of waste. Here’s an early sketch of it in Electric Quilt with those unsightly seams (in the yellow seeds fabric and the pink roses fabric).
So then I researched how to sew diamond shapes and discovered that these shapes are NOT true diamonds, but are rather “squished” or “elongated” diamonds. However, the traditional technique to make the diamonds would still work, but I’d have to recalculate the math.
Diamond cutting in process.
After a bit of testing I figured out an easy way to cut these elongated diamonds with a simple acrylic ruler that has a 45 degree line – no specialty ruler required! It’s all about the width that you cut them, and that information is included in detail in the pattern.
You’ll get a chance to use the 45 degree line on your ruler when cutting these diamonds.
Because these are not true diamonds, they have a definite left and right side. You can create some really cool designs with “mirror image” units. Here’s a tip to cut them correctly: Cut at least 2 stacked strips at a time. Make sure one strip is right side up, while the other is wrong side up. Or fold the strip in half and you’ll automatically get mirror image pairs.
Mirror image units – and no pesky seams in the middle of the fabric!
Abstract Garden Fabric Choices
My Abstract Garden collection includes a total of 20 fabrics arranged into warm and cool colorways. However, I wanted fabric selection to be easy for this quilt pattern, so that you could use any fabrics you like. So it only takes a total of 5 prints to create the design.
Since I was making two quilts (warm and cool), I decided to cut and piece them both at the same time. I starched the fabrics ahead of time before I cut, to help control the diagonal bias edges.
The fun part about choosing fabrics is creating a radiating, glowing look with your color choices. Because the center diamonds of the design are interchangeable, I played around with them to make sure I was happy with the color arrangement.
I love pretty stacks of cut units – don’t you?
Sewing the Geese Rows
Technically, this is a “row” quilt, meaning it’s sewn together into rows, rather than blocks. The super easy thing about this pattern is that each row is exactly the same! To make sewing go even easier, I recommend laying out all of the units, and sewing them into pairs on either side of the center triangle.
Although these are for 2 separate quilts, how fun would it be to alternate the rows?
My tip for sewing units with a 45 degree angle is that you need to offset the triangle tips by the same amount on both sides as you sew. The triangle tip will stick out about 1/4″ inch on either side. Notice the tips sticking out in the image below when the fabrics are matched up, right sides together:
Sew an accurate 1/4″ seam, using the point where the two fabrics intersect in the corner. This detail image below shows the sewn seam (stitched with my favorite 50 weight Aurifil thread). Notice it’s been rotated to show the angle at which I sew each unit under the machine. (Make sure to chain piece all the units at once for speed and efficiency.)
You’ll know you’ve sewn them correctly when you’ve created a nice smooth edge along both pieces. Don’t forget to trim the triangle tips! I also press all of my seams open so that my blocks will lie nice and flat.
Remember, this technique works for ANY units with a 45 degree angle. Below is what the center triangle looks like when I lined it up with the rest of the sewn pairs. It looks a little awkward, but notice how both tips are sticking out about 1/4″. Once the pieces are flipped over right sides together and sewn, everything will come out even, just like the diamond pairs.
I often get asked how I press seams open without burning my fingers. The answer is that I open them up with my fingers ahead of the iron, and I never use steam. Here’s a 20 second video clip showing how I press my seam open, once I’ve sewn my rows:
Here’s the backside of the cool version with all of the rows sewn and those nice, flat, pressed open seams. Doesn’t it look just as pretty as the front??
Although the pattern comes in 3 sizes, I chose to make the smallest size. But the best thing about this pattern is that it’s the same number of pieces to cut and sew, no matter which size you make. They just get larger as the quilt gets bigger. It only took me a few hours to piece each quit top, so it’s a great design to make when you are in a hurry, and it’s fun to show off your favorite fabrics in the diamonds.
One final tip to share today: don’t stress too much about perfection. Do your best to line up the seams as you sew the quilt, but notice the lower left corner of the image below. The turquoise and blue corners don’t match up perfectly in all the rows, but that’s ok. Once the quilt is quilted – you won’t even notice it!!
Very few of my points line up perfectly – but it still looks great!!
If you found this post helpful, you can help support my blogging efforts by purchasing my Geese in the Garden pattern or any of my other quilt patterns or fabrics at shop.ChristaQuilts.com. They’ll come infused with a little “Christa Quilts” magic, ensuring your success while I cheer you on!
In the next post, I’ll share tips on how I quilted each quilt with two quick and easy walking foot designs, so stay tuned!
In between moving, hosting the Blooming Wallflowers quilt along, and planning out my next round of designs, I haven’t had a chance to tell you much about some of my latest finishes. So I thought I’d take some time over the next several weeks to share more in-depth about my process of making quilts from my latest fabric line, Abstract Garden.
Think of the next several weeks as Do It Yourself quilt alongs. They won’t be as in-depth as my regular quilt alongs, but they’ll provide a little more insight into my quilt-making process and will help you have a smooth experience making your own version. I enjoy blogging about the process so that I can include some in-process photos, in addition to the full color diagrams and quilting plans I include in my patterns for sale.
One of the fun things I love about designing fabric for Benartex is being able to express myself creatively through fabric. I also love getting to know their other fabric designers and see the amazing things they make! Recently Benartex pulled together a fun collaboration to create this fun sampler quilt. Each block was designed by one of nine current fabric designers who participated, and there are instructions to make each block as well as the full quilt over on the Benartex blog.
As an inspiring bonus, the folks over at Benartex recolored the sampler quilt using each designers’ latest fabric line. Links to each block and fabric collection are below each image:
Isn’t it fun to see how unique a quilt looks made up in different fabrics? This is a great way to experience the variety of colors and styles that Benartex offers. Now I want to make them all!!
Can you believe we’ve come to the end of the Blooming Wallflowers quilt along? I’m so excited to see all of your finishes and encourage you to continue working at your own pace, even if you finish weeks (or months) later.
I was literally finishing the hand binding of this quilt on the way to quilt market last fall, so I didn’t get any pics of my binding in progress. However, I’ve written several other binding tutorials, and my process is exactly the same, no matter which quilt I’m making. So choose your favorite method – hand or machine, and enjoy this last step of the process!
Here’s a bonus tip for binding: I like to cut my strips out at 2″ wide and attach them with an exact 1/4″ seam using my BERNINA dual feed (which acts like a walking foot but I can use skinnier feet on it). This gives me a precise finished binding of 1/4″ and it’s even on both the front and back. Many times, I like to use the same background fabric as the binding so that it looks like the design is floating on the surface, rather than being interrupted by a contrasting fabric.
And just for fun, below the is the original Blooming Wallflowers quilt I made a couple of years earlier for a quilt magazine to promote my first line, Modern Marks. As you can see, this quilt is fun to make no matter which fabrics you choose!
I hope you’ve enjoyed making this quilt with me. And if you are worried about having quilt-along withdrawal, stay tuned for the next quilt along, coming soon!! It features a brand new quilt that I haven’t shared on the blog yet, and I’m sure you’ll love it just as much!
It’s been awhile since I’ve shared my sewing journey in real time, so while I’m working on some projects behind the scenes that I can’t show you, I’ll share my process in learning to attempt to sew a dress. I’ve always wanted to learn to sew clothing, and now that I have my own fabric, I’m even more inspired to make something to wear from it!
My first real attempt will be to try the Terrace dress from Liesl and Co. It looks like an easy enough pattern and I’ve met Liesl several times and think she’s an amazing clothing designer. My goal is to sewing clothing made from my fabrics that I can wear at quilt market and other industry events, so I’m ready to dive right in.
I also picked up the Palmer/Pletsch Complete Guide to Fitting which is full of great info on how to alter patterns to fit. The basic premise is that you “tissue fit” the pattern, meaning making alterations in the pattern itself before you begin sewing.
I know that this will be a huge learning curve for me, and I plan to make several practice versions of the dress, a so-called “wearable muslin” until I get it right. For my first attempt, I’m going to use Crossmarks in pink from my Modern Marks line. I figure that if it doesn’t turn out well, I can always throw the fabric back in my stash, right??
So far I’ve printed out the basic pattern onto paper and taped it together and chosen a size that mostly corresponds to my measurements. I could just dive in and cut out the fabric, but the Fit guide recommends tracing it onto soft tissue paper to adjust. So that will be the next step. I’ll keep you posted in real time and let you know how it goes!
How is your Blooming Wallflowers quilt coming along? Some of you have completely finished while others are just getting started and that’s perfectly fine. I love to encourage everyone to participate at their own pace. In cased you missed it, click here for quilting part 1 including 4 short You-Tube videos showing exactly how I quilted the blocks.
Today I’ll go over how I quilted the background using one of my favorite filler motifs – jagged stipple. In the quilting plan below, I quilted jagged stipple in the background areas after all of the blocks were quilted. I love filling in a quilt this way: as long as you can trace an unbroken line around your quilt, you can quilt the design continuously without any starts and stops.
Quilting all of the blocks first is what I call “anchor quilting” which means that the quilt is secure and won’t shift as I scrunch and smoosh it under the machine to finish up the rest.
I recommend practicing drawing out the design freehand on a blank sheet of paper, and even quilting a practice block to get a flow for the design. The jagged stipple is very forgiving and is basically a series of abrupt jaggedy lines going in every direction.
There’s really no wrong way to do it! In fact, I love the jagged stipple design so much, that it inspired one of the prints from my previous fabric line – the “Paper Cuts” print from Fandangle.
Here’s another short video showing how I move back and forth and all around to quilt this design. I especially love the look of texture on texture when I quilted the jagged lines on top of the navy blue Herringbone print from Modern Marks.
Because I’m using a matching blue Aurifil thread (from my Piece and Quilt Collection – Colors), it’s hard to see the actual stitching, which is usually a good thing so you won’t see all of the wobbles and bobbles as I quilt.
Here’s a detail shot where you can just barely see the quilting. I like quilting textural designs on busy quilts because I want my quilting to enhance the quilt rather than being the star of the show!
So give this fun design a try – whether you quilt it on this quilt or another WIP (work in progress).
Now we get to my absolute favorite part of the quilt-making process – machine quilting!!! I’m breaking this section into 2 posts so you’ll have plenty of time to get ‘er done! And thanks to all of you who keep sharing your progress, no matter what step you are on. It’s so inspiring to see all of the fantastic Blooming Wallflowers out there!! Remember to scroll to the end of this post for links to all of the quilt along steps and other important info.
Above is my sewing machine setup. I have a drop in table so that my sewing machine lies flush with the table. I’ve also put another table to my left, forming an “L” so that the quilt has plenty of room and won’t fall off the table. I’ll sit in the chair and scrunch and smoosh the quilt out of the way as I quilt.
Make a Quilting Plan
I always have a plan when I’m going to quilt a quilt. That way there are no surprises and I can enjoy the quilting process. Here’s my basic quilting plan that’s included in the Blooming Wallflowers quilt pattern:
I’m quilting 3 different designs: chevrons in the print triangles, pebbles in the light blue triangles, and jagged stipple in the background. I can quilt all of the triangles per block at once without stopping; then I’ll go back and quilt the navy blue background later. I used a light blue thread from my Aurifil Piece and Quilt collection Neutrals on the triangles, and will use a darker blue thread from my Colors collection for the background.
Here’s what the back side of the quilt looks like after quilting all of the triangles. I always use the same color thread in top and bobbin so that if there are any tension issues, it won’t show. I don’t mind seeing the quilting on the back of the quilt. In fact, I actually like how it shows up!
Notice how my actual quilting deviated slightly from the plan. I decided to quilt a few more lines in the chevrons, and I embellished the chevrons with an extra row of pebbles and some zig-zags to jazz it up a bit.
Step by Step Quilting Videos
Here are a few short videos of me quilting the blocks so you can see how I did it. Be sure to enlarge the screen for a better view:
First, I stitched in the ditch very carefully around one light blue triangle.
Then I filled in the light blue triangle with pebbles. I’m using a thicker ruler foot because I’m doing the pebbles and ruler work all at the same time.
Next, I used a special acrylic ruler to quilt straight line chevrons. I didn’t worry about the lines being equal in distance or hitting the points exactly. I don’t actually love doing ruler work because it’s a little too fussy for my taste. But I’ll use it to quilt straight lines as long as they don’t have to be exact.
Once the chevrons were quilted, I embellished one section with free-motion zig-zags. I quilted each section of triangles (the Abstract Garden prints and the light blue background) in one pass, with only one start and stop for the whole block.) In other words, I did all of the pebbles in one triangle and then went straight into the chevrons.
To start and a line of stitching, I take about 6-8 teeny tiny stitches and then start quilting normally. When I’m done, I end with 6-8 teeny tiny stitches to hold it in place and cut off the excess threads. Starting and stopping in a seam makes it less noticable.
Next week, we’ll quilt the background! I recommend trying out the quilting designs on a scrap of fabric and batting first, before applying them to your quilt.
I’m adding in another “catch-up” break so that those of you following along will have plenty of time to work on your quilts. But just remember, you can work on Blooming Wallflowers on your own schedule, too! Scroll to the end for links to all of the previous QAL posts.
It was exciting for me to see Blooming Wallflowers hanging in the show at QuiltCon last week! The biggest comment I got was how much nicer it looked in person (probably due to my inadequate photography skills, LOL!) and how much everyone loves the Navy Herringbone background from Modern Marks.
Sandra C aka @thebiasedge on Instragram shared her gorgeous quilt top that she’s getting ready to load on her long-arm. I can’t wait to see her quilting in progress!
I love how Michelle H made hers bigger by adding more blocks. Her print fabrics are fantastic!
Robin P (aka Palm Beach Quilter) chose a light green background for her version. She made the baby size which is the exact same layout, except the blocks are smaller! I’ve included 3 different sizes in the quilt pattern so you can customize it to fit your needs.
Who says you have to use a dark background? Gayle S is creating a stunning version with white background and a fun polka dot accent fabric. Isn’t it so fun??
Next week I’ll start sharing tips for fun and interesting machine quilting – I can’t wait!
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