Free Motion Quilting Fun with Flowers by Christine Baker August 28, 2014 written by Christine Baker August 28, 2014 4.9K For the love of flowers I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE free motion quilting fun with flowers!! As a result, I have quite a few different flower designs that I use and I try to learn new ones whenever I can. But before I show you my favorite flowers designs, I’m going to show you some of the “building blocks” that you need to master before you move onto free motion quilting flower designs. Spirals, spirals, spirals Spiral designs are so much fun to quilt but you have to make sure that you are paying attention or you might get stuck in the middle with no way to exit! To start a spiral, you start as though you a quilting a big circle, but instead of closing it off, you keep heading in towards the middle using concentric circles. When you are stitching in to the middle, make sure that you leave enough room to follow the same pattern back out. First step in the machine quilting spiral Once you are in the middle of the spiral you STOP moving. This will give you a nice crisp point. Then you start going backwards until you reach the outside again. The finished spiral You can use this as an overall design as shown in the following photo, or you can use them in a line for a border as I will show you tomorrow. Spiral overall machine quilting design Changing a spiral into a flower Once you get the hang of spirals, you can add petals to the outside to make flowers. Rounded petals make one type of flower and pointy petals make another. Put loops or swirls in between the flowers to make the design more interesting. Here is a closeup of one of the spiral flowers. Rounded flower with spiral center machine quilting design Pointed flower with small spiral center machine quilting design My favorite free motion flower I really love the following flower design as you can use it alone, with swirls and loops or echo around it to make a more complex design. Here is a video showing how I execute this design. Free motion machine quilting a flower design – YouTube Christine Baker of Fairfield Road Designs (www.fairfieldroaddesigns.com) shows how to machine quilt her favorite flower using Spagetti thread from WonderFil. A field of machine quilted flowers Time to practice Now that I showed you all of these flowers, it’s time for you to go practice on your own free motion quilting fun with flowers. Tomorrow we’ll finish up our free motion quilting with some border designs and then we’ll figure out how to put it all together into our sample book! This is part 4 of 5 in this series. Go back to part 3: Landscape Elements & Modern Quilts Go to part 5: Finishing Up Our Free Motion Quilting Sample Book [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”23735596″] Print this page or save as a PDF free motionmachine quiltingquiltingspagettiwonderfilwonderfil threads FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinRedditWhatsappTelegramEmail Christine Baker I have been designing and publishing quilt patterns for the last 16 years under the business name Fairfield Road Designs. My patterns range from fusible applique and piecing to felted wool applique and punchneedle. You can see all of patterns on my website www.fairfieldroaddesigns.com. previous post Free Motion Quilting: Landscape Elements & Modern Quilts next post Finishing Up Our Free Motion Quilting Sample Book YOU MAY ALSO LIKE... Why DecoBob isn’t your average bobbin thread Use Silco thread to add more punch to... When your quilting calls for threads to be... 1 foolproof method for perfect, smooth and clean... Why WonderFil Tutti thread is so good for... How Accent, Mirage and Spagetti threads highlight appliqued... 1 easy way to add a quilt binding,... Using combinations of 100wt, 80wt, 50wt, 12wt threads... Why using Invisafil thread is best for adding... 9 comments Christi May 1, 2019 - 1:29 am I love the flowers. Thank-you. Reply Judy A February 4, 2019 - 9:36 pm Love your step by step directions! Reply Dawn.N November 22, 2018 - 2:51 am i love your spiral flowers.I had trouble fitting petals in other flowers. with a bit of practice these work well.I use them a lot. Reply Lori Michel April 3, 2017 - 2:22 pm Thank you for the video on your flowers….I am going to have to try this and of course, first practice, practice, practice…. Reply Donna Simpson March 10, 2017 - 10:24 pm I have just started attempting free motion quilting. I really love these designs and will have to try them. Thank you! Reply Diane H August 30, 2014 - 8:58 am Definitely will give these flowers a try. They look so lovely. Thank you. Reply Christine Baker August 31, 2014 - 6:54 pm Thank you Diane! Reply Ellen Osten August 28, 2014 - 4:30 pm very nice demo. sometimes tracing the design on to a water soluble stabilizer (I use Solvy) is a help for just starting out with free-motion. Let me know if you’d like to try the Blendables 30 wt. Egyptian cotton. It has a unpredictable color change every 2 1/2″ to 5″ as it stitches out. Also, I like for top stitching and buttonholes; especially when I am sewing on batiks and wild prints. Blendables just seem to “blend” with everything. Sunshine & Smiles, ellen o. Reply Christine Baker August 31, 2014 - 7:00 pm Thanks Ellen! That’s a great tip about using the water soluble stabilizer – I’ll have to suggest that to my students next time I teach. I’ve never used the Blendables but I love quilting with batiks so maybe I should give them a try! 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