Quilting sampler sparks creativity using built in stitches

Use Built In Quilting Stitches to Finish that Quilt!

There’s no denying that many quilters get stuck in the process of making a quilt at the quilting step. Lucky for us, PFAFF included a variety of quilting stitches on the creative sensation pro to help us out.

I decided to make one of my UFO quilt tops into a quilting sampler to show some of the ways to use the built in quilting stitches to finish a quilt.

My UFO is a mini quilt top which had its limitations in repeating some of the larger designs at full size.
For example, here’s what is known as the clam shell motif. This is the size of the design when you select it. As the machine stitches it out you can see that it goes back over the stitching making for quite thick and obvious quilting.

This design I made smaller and then repeated and turned to make a line of joining leaves. There’s definitely some trial and error involved to get the designs to line up. The location on the grid is noted at the turning wheel and you can adjust position using the stylus or by selecting the arrows to make exact adjustments. You can also zoom in to see on the screen where your repeats are lining up (or not).

This is where the limitation of my quilt top being so small comes in – I could have added some extra fabric along the outside edge so I could position the design more in the border. This is done in traditional hoop quilting – adding extra to the edge so that tension is maintained in the border when quilting.

I did attempt to solve some of the tension issue by basting my final section. It was becoming apparent that there was not enough tension because my thread kept breaking! Lucky for me I could use the needle position icons to back up in the design and go back over the design area that was missed when the thread broke.

The Embroidery Collection guide that comes with the creative sensation pro gives some extra logistical details about the built in stitches. Looking through the collection helped me pick out which designs I wanted to try. Beside each design it tells you the built in size and shows how many color changes are programmed in the design. It will also show you if the design is a special technique, requiring specialty needles or extra steps to complete the design.
I used this design for a border and knew it would come out around 3″ wide. I chose to shrink it down to fit in my border – and then ran into the problem of not having enough fabric beyond my border to keep the design in the hoop area. I used it anyway!

I really like the traditional look of this design and how much area it fills in. I decided to save it in my personal files on the machine so I could use it again!

At this point most of my mini quilt top was covered in designs. I had two more border areas to fill in so I started looking for long and narrow built in designs. The long tulip has a slight curve and works well in a border as its line makes your eye keep moving over the quilt top.

I loved the gracefulness of this design! So much so that I took the mini quilt out of the hoop, grabbed some light green fabric and purple thread and stitched out this:

I’m not sure yet what this design will become, maybe a pillow or a small zippered bag – I do know that it will be something for me!

Then I tried this long design and duplicated it below itself. I think this would be an interesting filler design in a modern quilt.

Here’s how my mini quilt top looks now:

With the help of the built in quilting stitches on the creative sensation pro I finally quilted this mini! Not only that, I discovered several stitches that led me to some more creative projects. I’ll share one of them with you in the next post 🙂