Finishing Up Our Free Motion Quilting Sample Book

Bordering on amazing!

Let’s add a couple more quilting designs before finishing up our free motion quilting sample book.

Almost every quilt has borders – wide ones, skinny ones and everything in between. Sometimes it’s a challenge to find the right design for the borders on your quilt, so today I’m going to show you some of my favorite free motion border designs and try out some new ones. The “Loop de Loop” is my “go-to” border design as it can work for most thin borders (1″ – 3″ in width). When stitching this design you alternate the direction of the loops as you go along the border. If you use a 12 wt thread such as Spagetti by WonderFil the design will really “pop”!

Loop de loop machine quilted border design

Spirals in a line

Yesterday I showed you how to use spirals for all over designs and to make flowers, but you can also use them in borders like in the first picture. Spirals can also be made in a square shape. Same as before, you have to make sure to leave room to come back out from the middle as shown in the second picture. The third picture is a border made with square spirals.

Spirals border design with Spagetti thread from WonderFil

Stepping out of my comfort zone

I have to admit, I often get into a quilting rut and as a result I use my “go-to” loop de loop design A LOT!! So I decided this week I should try out some new border designs. I have many books with free motion quilting designs so I hauled some of them out and tried out some of the ones that I thought I would use the most. As you can see, I probably need to practice more in order for them to be uniform in shape, but I think I could get the hang of them eventually!!

Trying out some new border designs #1

Free motion sampler is DONE

Well, by the end of today I had used up all of the space on my quilt sandwich, so it was time to take it off the frame and cut all of the “pages” apart.

All ready to cut apart and finish

First I trimmed the rectangles with a rotary cutter and ruler and then I finished the edges with my Spagetti and Fruitti threads and a zig zag stitch on my home machine. Using my eyelet setter, I put one hole in the corner of each page so that I could put a ring through it. Just for fun I tied some colorful ribbons to the ring. Here is my finished “book”.

The finished machine quilting sample book

That’s a wrap

Now that it’s Friday, it’s time for me to say goodbye for another month. I hope you found this week to be informative and hope that you’ll be inspired to spend some time practicing your own free motion quilting!