99 Machine Quilting Designs #41 – FMQ Hears and Geometrics

November 29, 2025November 24, 2025Leave a comment

We’re back to free-motion quilting this week with two dense designs that will add lots of texture to a full-sized quilt: Echoed Hearts and Geometrics. If you want to learn more about these designs, click on the video below.

Try these designs on Surplus Strips!

Want to try one or both of these designs on a real quilt? Check out Surplus Strips, a beginner-friendly design made from just one Jelly Roll and background fabric. You can get the kit (while supplies last) or pattern below. You can also take a look at all my Jelly Rolls to assemble your own custom kit.

Here’s a detail shot of two different quilting designs used on this quilt. I love making different iterations of my quilts, as I’ve actually made Surplus Strips four times! There are endless opportunities to vary this quilt from fabric choice to what designs you quilt on it.

Bonus Video – Free Motion Quilting on Surplus Strips

This is a how-to video on how I quilted different dense FMQ designs on Surplus Strips. If you want a deep dive into making the quilting plan for this quilt, check out the video below.

I hope you’re enjoying this series! Leave a comment to let me know what you think!

99 Machine Quilting Designs #40 – Decorative Stitch Grids

November 21, 2025November 15, 2025Leave a comment

This week we are practicing more decorative stitches with our walking foot. Any traditional “straight line” design be modified for this technique. Watch and learn below:

Quilt This Design on a Real Quilt!

Practice quilting decorative stitches on Ticker Tape! I have several colorways of this kit available (while supplies last). It’s made from one jelly roll of Dazzle Dots with a colorful background.

Click Here to view all Quilt Kits
Click Here to grab the Ticker Tape Quilt Pattern – PDF Download

I even used decorative stitches on the binding, too! It’s a fast way to finish and the binding stitches become part of the overall quilting design. I love paring decorative stitches with other walking foot designs like wavy lines.

Bonus Video – Watch Me Quilt 2 Versions of Ticker Tape

I put together a video showing how I quilted two different colorways of Ticker Tape. I will usually make the same quilt more than once, just to try out different machine quilting ideas.

Here’s my recoloring of Ticker Tape in 4 different colorways. Which is your fave??
Click here to grab the Ticker Tape Quilt Kit – while Supplies last!

99 Designs Episode #38 – Quilting Wavy Chevrons!

November 6, 2025November 5, 2025Leave a comment

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.

Click here to view all quilt patterns on sale.

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!

Free-Motion Quilting Tutorial: Geometric Shapes, 99 Designs Episode 33

October 3, 2025October 2, 2025Leave a comment

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:

Click here to view all machine quilting videos tutorials in the series!

Quilt These Designs on Block Chain

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!

Huge Fabric Clearance

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!

Click here to view all fabrics on sale.

Sharing is Caring!

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!!

Beaded Lanterns QAL Part 3 – Sewing the Quilt Top

September 23, 2025September 19, 2025Leave a comment

How are your Beaded Lanterns quilt blocks coming along? It’s time to sew them together to create the quilt top! If you are just now finding the quilt along, be sure to grab the Beaded Lanterns free quilt pattern to join the fun!

To start things off, I like to lay out my blocks on a design wall. Then I’ll spend time arranging them into a pleasing order. I usually take a picture with my camera phone to refer to while sewing.

Once that’s done, I’ll make a stack of blocks to sew in order and then chain piece, or assembly line sew them all at once. I always start sewing with a leader/ender piece of scrap fabric to catch my threads. This prevents them from knotting up when I start and stop.

It makes a beautiful mess and I love the feeling of accomplishment!

I’ll sew all of the blocks together into rows and then continue using my design wall to lay it out as I join the rows together. I press after every round of sewing to keep things nice and flat.

As you can sew I prefer to press all my seams open. This ensures flat blocks, flat rows, and a very flat quilt top which will make machine quilting so much easier! I sew with a short stitch length (2.0) so that nothing comes apart while handling.

I pin generously as I sew to keep things from shifting. Because my seams are pressed open, I’m not pinning right into the intersection. Instead I will pin on either side of the seams I want to match up and I get really clean joins and matching points this way.

Finally, I add the borders and give the quilt top a final press! Notice the bit of patchwork on the design wall below. I sewed together some leftovers into strip units and I’ll start using those on the back.

Coming up next: I’ll need to piece the quilt backing, baste the layers and quilt the quilt, so stay tuned for more! Click the links below to catch up on any of the previous steps:

Beaded Lanterns QAL Week 2 Blocks

September 9, 2025September 8, 2025Leave a comment

This week it’s time to sew all of our cut units from last week into our Lanterns blocks!

Sewing the Beaded Lanterns Blocks

Read through the free quilt pattern for instructions on sewing everything together. To keep the blocks nice and straight I sewed with the light background fabric on top each time. I also sewed with a shorter stitch length (2.0) to strengthen the seams and then pressed them open for incredibly flat blocks.

I like to chain sew or assembly line stitch which means slipping each pair of units to sew under the machine and sewing continuously without breaking thread in between. Here’s my first run through after I added the lighter background to the sides of each lantern unit:

I sew as many units together as possible, then cut them all apart, press the units, then continue chain piecing until the entire block is sewn. It creates quite a beautiful mess by the time I’m done but it’s a quick and efficient way to sew!

This block is very simple because it’s two of the same halves sewn together. I used the same fabric for each Lantern unit. But you could absolutely go super scrappy if you wanted to! The trick is to make sure you are sewing with accurate 1/4″ seams so that each unit ends up the same size.

I press each seam as I go and then press the final block front and back when I’m finished. The reason I do this is so that the blocks and quilt top will lie flat for domestic machine quilting. I’m always thinking about how the piecing will affect the quilting and vice versa!

I love having a yummy pile of freshly sewn bocks! Aren’t they pretty?

Don’t forget to make the square blocks in addition to the lantern blocks! If you don’t already have a copy of the free quilt pattern, you can grab it below, along with the optional kit in 3 colorways:

Homework:

Sew all of the blocks so they are ready to make the quilt top. Share pics of your progress and feel free to ask for any help you need over in my Christa Quilts Group on Facebook!

Beaded Lanterns QAL Week 1 Cutting

September 2, 2025August 19, 2025Leave a comment

This week it’s time to cut into your yummy fabrics as we begin to make Beaded Lanterns. If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to download my free Beaded Lanterns Quilt pattern to follow along. Now, let’s get started!

Cutting Beaded Lanterns Fabrics

You’ll need a total of 36 precut strips from a standard sized strip roll. Using my Dazzle Dots 2 roll shown above, I took out 2 strips of the ice blue color because it was the same as the background and I didn’t want a “hole” in my quilt. I also took out the 2 white strips since it had the least amount of contrast. That left me with a total of 18 colors, 2 strips of each. Perfect!

Click here to get my Christa Quilts Rotary Cutter (on sale while supplies last).
It includes my special “magical” pixie dust which makes you a better quilter, LOL!!

Follow the pattern instructions on page 2 to cut out your individual units for each block, plus cutting up the 4 yards of background fabric (which includes the binding). To speed up the cutting, I layered 2 strips of each color (4 layers of fabric), and cut through several stacks of strips at one time.

I prefer to cut out all of my units to the correct size first, before sewing. After many years of trial and error, I’ve found that my units are much more accurate this way.

I plan to set aside the leftovers after cutting, and then piece them into the backing. This is totally optional, but it’s a fun way to personalize your quilt!

Ta-Da! All of my pieces are cut and ready to sew into blocks for next week!

Now it’s your turn to share. You can share your work in progress on social media using #beadedlanternsqal. Or you can post pics and ask questions over in my Christa Quilts Facebook group.

Machine Quilting Bling with Your Walking Foot

August 26, 2025August 22, 2025Leave a comment

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!

Get the Bling Quilt Pattern

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??

Grab My Kits and Fabrics While Supplies Last!

Click here to view all quilt kits made from my designer fabrics.

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!

99 Designs Video Episode 6 – FMQ Triangle Texture

February 27, 2025February 26, 2025Leave a comment

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!

Suplus Strips Quilt Pattern

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!

Surplus Strips quilts made from Fandangle by Christa Watson

Color Weave Remake: Spray Basting Tutorial

November 18, 2024November 15, 2024Leave a comment

I’ve been working on a remake of my popular Color Weave quilt. I realized that I don’t create a ton of new patterns each year and I really like remaking some of my classics! It’s been super fun to create it from my current fabric collection, Dazzle Dots (#9 if you are counting). Originally I made this quilt using my Abstract Garden fabric line (#3) which is shown on the pattern cover below. Don’t they look similar?

I spray baste all of my quilts, so I took the opportunity of creating a step-by-step video tutorial showing how I did this on my Color Weave quilt. Click the image below to watch:

For a limited Time, you can grab a complete Color Weave quilt kit if you’d like to make one exactly like me, using Dazzle Dots. Or you can grab the Color Weave quilt pattern and choose your own fabrics for a different look. You can make this quilt from pre-cut strips, fat quarters, or even scraps. The hard part is trying to make just one!!