Free motion quilting ideas

Sometimes I get stuck for new ideas to try when free motion quilting. I have done quite a bit of stippling and meandering, curls and spirals, all of which I do as a continual line design. This means you don't start and stop, but work back and forward across the entire quilt, working your way down the quilt. However it is good to try new things and different styles will challenge you to improve your control of the machine.

I was asked to do some free motion quilting on this batik quilt that had areas of small piecing and then areas where fairly large triangles were used between the pieced blocks

The batik quilt I am working on, areas of small piecing, and large green triangles between these blocks.

I didn't feel that an all over quilting style would suit the batik green fabric , so thought I would try and follow the print of the fabric and hopefully enhance the batik effect.

This is quite a challenging task, especially with a batik as the pattern is very random, often small and quite spikey which can be hard to follow. 

Some ares of the design are clearly defined, others are quite soft and abstract.

Soft abstract designs can be a bit hard to follow but enjoy the challenge and give it a go, it will look great. Don't stress too much about following the outline exactly you will improve with practice, and the effect is created by the quilting following the effect of the print, not by carefully outlining it, the outline isn't clear on some areas anyway!

I have found that fairly slow is a good approach, but not too slow as your quilting can become a bit stilted or jerky if you go too slow. This quilting works better if you leave areas of background between the print unquilted as the quilting stands out more. The best way I have found to do this is to quilt as much as you can in one go, then when you need to start somewhere else, do a few stitches in the same spot to anchor the thread, then stop the machine, release the presser foot if needed and "jump" to the next spot. Start here by again stitching a few stitches on top of each other and off you go. This eliminates bringing up your bobbin thread each time you start which can be tedious. It will mean that you will have to clip your threads that lie between where you finished and started next, but this can wait until you are finished. Don't forget they will be on the back too!

This shows the back, and my "jump threads" that will need clipping at the end.

The line of stitching showing here is basting, not jump threads.

Here you can see some threads where I have jumped to another spot.

How much print detail you choose to stitch depends on you, how much time you want to put in to the quilting and personal taste. Don't feel you have to quilt everything. Too much may take over the print, you still want to see the fabric print behind the quilting. This is a really good exercise for improving fine control of your machine and following a design. I hope you have fun experimenting with this, enjoy, Pam

Ps the thread I am using is Wonderfil Tutti,a 50 wt variegated quilting thread which comes in a whole range of colours. They work really well with the colour variety in batik fabrics.