Straight lines before free-motion quilting

Welcome back to my last blog post of the week. I hope you enjoyed making this table runner. I was pleasantly surprised at the spool adapter I showed you yesterday, this great feature makes the process of sewing very stable.

I know that there are many quilters dreading this moment so I have come up with simple steps to make your quilting easy. I, on the other hand, was looking forward to this part as I knew the PFAFF creative icon would be the perfect tool.

The first step is to sandwich your quilt! I use ODIF 505 Temporary Fabric Adhesive Spray and wait overnight to begin quilting so I’m sure nothing will move.

Now for this piece, I want to have some free-motion designs so in order to ensure that my piece won’t shift or shrink during that part, I’m going to run some straight line quilting along the table runner so that it will ‘set’ my project.

I decided to do some simple stitch in the ditch to set my table runner as I don’t want to see that quilting. I want all eyes on the free-motion design. It was really easy to do since the ¼” foot is designed to be used with the integrated dual feed system which means that I don’t need a bulky walking foot for any straight line quilting on the creative icon. 

And by a simple touch of the screen I was able to select my quilting stitch and adjust length and tension.

Once that was done, I changed to my Dynamic Spring foot and adjusted the speed to allow me to free-motion quilt in the center of the blocks.

Once again I was impressed on how easy it was to change foot the creative icon. I realized that I never have to unscrew the pressure foot ankle, the Dynamic Spring foot clips onto it.

Again, the machine was my true friend as I had enough work space in height and width to see where I was going. And I really love using Dynamic Spring Foot. There was no hesitation and my free-motion quilting was very fun to do.

I had practiced the design and movement on paper until I was ready to move to the creative icon. And this is really important to remember.

You can’t quilt it if you can’t draw it!

Here’s my quilting design. The first stitch in the ditch is marked in black, the second is in yellow. Once that’s done, you can do a free-motion pattern. I liked the floral design and decided to go with it on the table runner.

Here’s the way I quilted it:

If you really want to mark your table runner and free-motion on the drawing then I suggest drawing the pattern on a Glad Press’n Seal sheet, you can easily remove it once done by simply tearing it off and using a hot iron on the tough to reach pieces under your thread.  Don’t worry! It won’t melt onto your fabric or iron.

I hope that these simple steps have helped you gain confidence in your quilting abilities.

All that is left to do is the binding and you’ll be ready to enjoy your new table runner.

If you’re worried about the inside corners… no need to worry. Mark your ¼” and find the inside corner (see photo). When you’re sewing your binding, stop at that corner and simply move to the other side of the quilt, while stretching out the side you just stitched to become a continuous straight with your new edge and continue sewing. (OK, check the photo as an image speaks louder than words.)

I must admit that I cheated on this table runner. I used leftover 2½” strips in the light color for my binding and machine stitched on both sides.

And now for some good news: we are now March 2^nd!

This means that February is over!

No more February blues! The beauty of the PFAFF creative icon is that it will give you hours of joyful sewing and quilting all year long! Join me in April, when I explore more invaluable features on this extraordinary sewing and quilting machine.

Enjoy!