Did you know that one of the easiest ways to change up your free-motion quilting is to stitch the design with wavy lines? That’s what I’m showing in my latest video. Watch and learn below:
If you are looking for fun quilt patterns to practice your quilting skills, check out my printed patterns. They are all on sale now for way less than the regular price.
Let me know how your free-motion practice is coming along. I still have many more videos to share! I’ve you want to see them all, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. It’s totally free to watch! Then catch up on my 99 Machine Quilting Designs play list while you are there!
I have two videos to share with you this week, covering 4 designs that are all closely related! These are fantastic for quilting strip quilts, or other linear areas of your quilt like borders and sashing. First take a look at my quilting tutorial for Cursive L’s and Double L’s below:
I used the Cursive L’s design when quilting an earlier version of my Beaded Lanterns quilt. The free pattern includes a step by step quilting plan which breaks down how to quilt it, step by step.
If you’d like to stitch out a more intricate design, take a look at Ribbon Candy and Crazy 8’s. All of these designs require a little more thinking and planning to execute, but once you have them down, they’ll really punch up your quilts! Watch and learn even more below:
If you haven’t already grabbed a copy of my book, 99 Machine Quilting Designs, it’s a great companion to my free YouTube series. I promise, if you quilt out just one practice sandwich a day, you’ll vastly improve your domestic machine quilting skills in no time!
Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for easy access to these videos, and check out my 99 Designs Machine Quilting Playlist to catch up on previous tutorials. They’ll stay up indefinitely so you can refer back to them any time you wish!
In this week’s episode of 99 Machine Quilting Designs, practice free motion quilting more “shapes on a stick” like Balloon Shapes and Shish Kebabs. Click below to watch and learn:
I made this quilt before I started making video tutorials, but it’s a great one to practice these designs! The Block Chain quilt pattern includes a quilting plan showing you how and it’s perfect for your favorite charm packs!
Right now, my Gridwork charm packs shown in the quilt above are on sale for way below the retail price. I’ve also reduced the price of many of my earlier fabric lines, and they are only available while supplies last!
As you practice your machine quilting designs on samples, or real quilts, be sure to share what you’ve made over in my Christa Quilts Group on Facebook. Fellow members and I would love to cheer you on!!
In this week’s episode of 99 Machine Quilting Designs learn to quilt 3 versions of Geometric Chains, or what I lovingly refer to as “Shapes on a Stick.” Click play below to watch:
The featured quilt on the wall behind me is called Plumb Lines and the pattern can be found in my book with Angela Walters called, the Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting. I was so pleased when I entered it into a machine quilting show and it won a ribbon!
I’m excited to share my step-by-step process for quilting my latest iteration of Bling. This is one of my favorite patterns I’ve made over the years. Whenever I get a new idea for a fun colorscheme or quilting plan, I can’t help remaking some of my most popular patterns! Click below to watch and let me know what you think!
You can choose a similar color story and layout, or you can switch things up and make it your own! The last few times I’ve made this quilt, I chose scrappy backgrounds, but you can also use one fabric for the background and it looks just as good. Hmmm, maybe you’ll want to make more than one like I did??
I always like to kit up a quilt when I make it because I know others will like it too. However, these are only available for a limited time, as long as the fabrics are in print. Enjoy some beauty shots of this quilt that I took while on a recent beach vacation. It was a nice cloudy day, and seeing these pics brings back great memories!
I had just as much fun making the pieced backing and using up a bunch of leftover Dazzle Dots!
In this week’s episode of 99 Machine Quilting Designs you can learn how to free-motion quilt 2 closely related designs called Scrollwork and Echoed Curls. Watch below:
Get the Swanky Spirals Pattern
The quilt shown behind me in the video is my Swanky Spirals pattern featuring Dazzle Dots. It’s my machine quilting sampler that includes nearly every FMQ design I can think of!
I’m so excited to check something off of my bucket list! I’ve been wanting to teach at Empty Spools Seminars in Asilomar, CA for as long as I’ve been a quilter and 2026 will finally be the year, whoo hoo!!
Normally when I travel and teach I give a one hour lecture and 1-2 days of machine quilting workshops. I love it, but all we have time for in that short period of time is to quilt out a bunch of practice samples. I also discuss how students can apply what they’ve learned to an actual quilt but of course, they’ll need to go home and do that on their own time.
Well, I’m bursting with excitement to let you know that my week long workshop at Empty Spools takes it to the next level. In this class, you’ll get to bring in a real, basted quilt (or 2) and learn how to actually quilt it all week in class! We will go through a series of exercises to get you comfortable with the process and then I’ll guide you step-by-step to quilt and finish your own quilt. Won’t that be fun??
Take a look below at the schedule for the week. Click on the image to enlarge it if needed:
I will be teaching this in-depth workshop, called “Quilt That Quilt!” during Session 1 which runs from Sunday, March 1 through Friday, March 6 of 2026. This gives you plenty of time to gather supplies and make arrangements for your visit. Registration includes alls meals and you can either stay on campus, or make your own accommodations.
Click the image below to enlarge for details on costs:
This workshop/retreat is a chance for you to go through the entire process of making a quilt from start to finish. Once you sign up, I’ll be in touch with students so that they can prepare a quilt of their choice so it’s all ready to quilt once they arrive to class next year. I can’t wait to see what quilts students choose to make, and I’m so excited to help them experience the joy of making their own quilts.
This is a big event and commitment but I promise its worth it to set aside the time and money to attend. Do you have any questions? Please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them ASAP!
This week for 99 Machine Quilting Designs we are learning to quilt Triangle Texture, a design that’s great for modern OR traditional quilts! Watch below and let me know what you think!
Get the Surplus Strips Quilt Pattern or Kit I recently combined 2 motifs – boxes and triangles on the gray version of my Surplus Strips quilt! You can now grab the kit to make this quilt with the gray or white background, or grab the pattern and choose your own colors. It’s fun to make and fun to quilt!
If you’d like to choose your own adventure, grab the Surplus Strips quilt pattern and then rummage through your stash for the perfect colors to make it your own. It’s the perfect design for using up leftover (surplus) precut strips!!
Below are 2 versions I made a few years ago and it looks great no matter what!
Starting in January of 2025, I’m excited to share an entire year’s worth of machine quilting tutorials over on my Christa Quilts YouTube Channel. This is something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I wrote my book, 99 Machine Quilting Designs. With the help of my tech savvy college kids, I’m finally making this dream a reality. Click the video below for a sneak peek of what’s to come!
Grab Your Quilting Textbook to Follow Along!
Although the entire series will be free to watch, I highly recommend getting my book to follow along. It’s the perfect textbook for independent study as you practice your machine quilting skills. It’s available as an instant PDF download which you can save to your computer for quick and easy reference!
We filmed about half of the series over the summer and the kids have spent the last few months editing them together so they are ready to go starting on the first week of January. That will take us through until about the summertime. Then, over the winter we’ve been working on the other half of the series which will run through the end of 2025 and a bit into 2026. I’m very pleased with how everything is looking so far and I’m excited to share it all with you!
Here’s a bit of what my studio looks like when we are in the thick of it:
My kids did a great job hanging the quilts that served as my backdrop for each episode.
Making these videos has been a fun family affair. I hope you enjoy them!!
Bonus Machine Quilting Tutorials on “Real” Quilts
Throughout the year as I make more quilts, I’ll share bonus videos showing how I apply many of these motifs to an actual quilt. Here’s just one example from a previous quilt I made called Swanky Spirals. This is the quilt shown behind me in the preview video above.
Now I need your help. I’d love to know your biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to domestic machine quilting. Please leave a comment below letting me know any particular issues you have. I’ll incorporate these into the series as much as possible. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to join the fun!
My Color Weave Quilt along kicks off Monday, Sept 16th and I’m doing something a little a little different this time around. I’ll be sharing everything via email rather than here on my blog. Lately I’ve been rethinking my social media strategy and looking at numbers. Because I get higher engagement via my direct newsletter, this will be an experiment to see if that format works best for a quilt along. Keep reading below to see how you can join in the fun….
Now, not to confuse things, but this is my blog post you are reading right now. You may get this delivered to you via email if you’ve signed up for that. But that’s a totally different system than my regular, weekly email newsletter. So if you aren’t sure if you are on that list, you can sign up here. This link will take you to my free patterns page which automatically signs you up for my emails. Got it??
Everyone already on my email list will automatically get the Quilt Along emails, and the best thing about it is that it’s free and you don’t even have to make the quilt! I will share tips and tricks for making the entire quilt from start to finish, including basting, machine quilting AND binding. These are techniques that will apply to any quilt you make. I really love empowering others to actually finish their quilts and reduce their UFO piles!
And while supplies last, I’ve put together kits made from precut strips of my Dazzle Dots fabric line. This includes the beautiful rainbow colors as well as both the light and dark grey strips. This is everything you’ll need for the quilt top – including the binding.
Christa Quilts 