I’ve been a little nervous about this week’s designs, because…feathers! Now granted, they are not traditional feathers, but still. You can check out previous weeks here: Week 1: Basic meanders, Week 2: Swirls, Week 3, Paisley and leafy meanders. Discover her helpful hints, encouragement, and machine quilting inspiration when you download the article collection eBook, Creative Machine Quilting: Finding Inspiration for Free-motion Designs.Here we are already at the final week of working my way through Angela Walter’s new book Free-Motion Meandering. She shares so much information to help us machine quilt the basics and beyond with accuracy and enjoyment. (figure 6)Īfter you feel confident in your ‘basic meander’ Susan suggests exploring motifs that fall into the meander category by using shapes outside of puzzle-like knobs. You can work outward radially, in a circular pattern (figure 5) or in swaths. One way to avoid this is to consistently fill in specific areas. By the time you discover you have a big empty space or that you’ve trapped yourself, it is too late. This may happen if you can’t see well where you are going, since the presser foot obscures the path ahead. Sometimes, beginners find themselves with big empty spaces or trapped with no way out. The third thing to work on is thinking ahead and planning an escape route. After two in this direction, force yourself to change direction again. If this is a problem for you, count to two when you finish the second knob, force yourself to change direction and make the next knob at a different angle than the others. They are focusing so hard on getting the knobs smooth and the same size that they simply forget to change direction. (figure 3)īeginners often get started and don’t want to stop, so all their knobs line up in a long string. If you don’t, all your knobs line up, creating a secondary pattern. The second challenge is learning to change direction frequently. Don’t do this you need all the oxygen your brain you can get!) Visualize the curves on a puzzle piece and project that image onto your quilt top as you work. (Some beginner free-motion quilters actually hold their breath. This will help you get in the zone and establish a nice rhythm, which leads to smoothness and consistent stitch length. Try to find the sweet spot-the balance between how fast the needle is going and how fast your hands are going. I usually suggest that students slow down, and concentrate on moving their hands in a deliberate way and at a constant speed. The first is making sure your quilting is smooth (no sharp points or changes in direction) and that all the knobs are the same size. There are three important things to work on if you want to create a nice basic meander pattern. (figure 1) Most beginners start out with a meander that looks like figure 2-uneven knob sizes, unequal space between knobs, strange shapes, sharp points, and crooked changes of direction. The most basic meander resembles curves on puzzle pieces. MeandersĮxcerpted from the article by Susan Brubaker Knapp Susan shares her expertise with these technique tips that are sure to help you machine quilt meanders like a pro. Even though this is a motif we often learn as beginners, it can actually be quite difficult to master. The section where she teaches how to machine quilt ‘basic meanders,’ was by far the most helpful for me. Susan Brubaker Knapp wrote a series of articles, which has been collected into a convenient eBook, to help artists like us develop our skills and to encourage us to explore diverse quilting motifs. Free-motion quilting is a technique that takes a lot of practice.
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