4 presser feet made to PIECE, QUILT, and BIND! Let’s finish a fidget quilt!

How quickly time flies when you’re having fun! Yesterday I showed you how to use odds and ends to make 4 more texture blocks for our fidget quilts. This past week, I enjoyed trying out numerous techniques, functions, and optional accessories for the Husqvarna Viking Designer Ruby 90. All my experimenting was loads of fun!

Today is about finishing up the fidget quilts, which includes sewing the blocks together, quilting at least one of them, and getting the binding on before time runs out.

Since I don’t need the embroidery unit today, I removed it and attached the optional extension table. I LOVE this table, and it has so much room to work on. I use this when I’m sewing or quilting, and the gentle curve on the front is fantastic for larger projects. There are no corners or sharp edges on which projects can get caught!

My favorite foot for piecing is the Quilter’s ¼” Piecing Foot which gives you a consistent ¼” seam. There are various markings on it, should you need to pivot or use a slightly larger or smaller seam. It’s my go-to foot for all my piecing.

I trimmed a couple of the blocks so they would match up with the larger blocks I made using the Husqvarna Viking Texture Hoop. There was ample room in my blocks for trimming, and I now have the tops for two fidget quilts. While I like how they turned out, they don’t look complete without some quilting.

And here’s the second fidget quilt. I need to work on the lace-up block. I realized I should’ve used an odd number of eyelets or a longer lace. Since this is all I had, the ends of the laces will likely end up in the binding. I love the fidget quilts because there’s no right or wrong. It’s about experimenting!

Both fidget quilts turned out fantastic. I love all the texture and the activities. But did you ever notice how people can’t resist touching a quilt? Even if the quilt is cotton, which tends to be cold, people like to feel the texture. So, my fidget quilts needed some quilting, and I decided to try a bit of straight-line quilting with the Interchangeable Dual Feed Foot and some free motion quilting.

Let’s start with the straight-line quilting.

I found the thickness of the fidget quilt and some of the embellishments were making it hard to put the quilt under the presser foot. That’s an easy fix. There are two settings on the Presser Foot Up/Extra Lift function, and when you give that function a second touch, the presser foot goes to the highest position, and the feed teeth drop below the stitch plate. It’s an amazing feature and was so helpful.

One of the things I love about the Interchangeable Dual Feed Foot is the ability to change the presser feet. This foot, included with the Designer Ruby 90, comes with two different presser feet, but there are several other optional feet you can purchase. I wanted to do some stitching in the ditch, so I used the Changeable Decorative Guide Foot, which has a center guide to make it easy to follow the seam lines.

Once all the stitch in the ditch was complete, it was onto some free motion. Setting up the Designer Ruby 90 for free motion quilting is so easy. I select the Free Motion icon from the main screen, which gives me a menu with three options depending on which type of free motion I wish to do. You can see the Free Motion icon highlighted in blue at the bottom of the main screen.

A brief description of each of the three styles and the type of foot required helps me select the appropriate setting. Once I choose one of the settings, the feed teeth drop below the stitch plate, and the tension is adjusted. Of course, you can adjust the tension settings if you wish, but at least you have a starting point.

I like to use the Sensor Q Foot for free motion quilting. It’s a spring action foot that ‘hops’ when used, which means the foot holds the fabric down as the needle exits the project. There are other styles of spring feet, and I find the spring feet reduce the likelihood of skipped stitches, although the floating and ruler feet work equally well. What kind of free-motion quilting and the foot you use depends on other factors such as the type of thread, needle, and fabric you use. The Sensor Q foot is quiet and offers the freedom to stitch in any direction! I LOVE it.

It’s best to use a pair of gloves to get more control over your work and be sure to have excess batting and backing along all the edges. Otherwise, it’s challenging to quilt along the edges because you have nothing to grip at the edges.

Another great tip for quilting is to use a busy print to back your project. If any crazy things happen on the back, they won’t be visible. I didn’t have any issues with tension and I often use two different color threads – one to match the backing and various ones to match the top. I rarely get thread pops on the top, and if I do, I just adjust the tension.

I had fun using different decorative stitches for quilting various blocks – like the serpentine stitch for the block with the rick rack. The sky’s the limit when you get to the quilting process, although I mostly use the various running stitches for quilting rather than a multi-step decorative stitch.

Would I change any of the techniques? The only thing I might change is to sew the buttons on after the project is quilted. It was challenging to get close to the buttons, but I could’ve changed up the quilting style in that block.

Here’s one of the fidget quilts minus the binding.

I still have to quilt the second fidget quilt, but I’ll leave it for another day. I want to get the binding on this quilt before I sign off this week.

I like to use the Interchangeable Dual Feed foot to put the binding on. If you’re not familiar with my binding techniques, check out one of my past posts on Binding a Quilt. This post on QUILTsocial shows you how I put the binding on a project.

And here’s one of the finished fidget quilts. I LOVE IT!! It turned out way better than I imagined, and now I want to finish the second one, and I want to make more! It looks much nicer with a binding, and it doesn’t take long to sew it on with the machine.

Using the various techniques, functions, and optional accessories of the Husqvarna Viking Designer Ruby 90 made this a super easy and fun project to make. If you’re new to any aspect of quilting and sewing, these fidget quilts are so much fun to make. They’re a great way to use up odds and ends and a fantastic way to experiment with new techniques or quilting patterns.

Thanks so much for following along, and if you end up making a fidget quilt, I’d love to see it.

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: 4 more texture blocks for a fidget quilt using odds and ends