Free motion quilting has been one of the most liberating and enjoyable experiences for me, with my love of zentangles and doodling it just appealed to me from the start as essentially it’s drawing with the needle.
If you have any experience of free motion quilting I urge you to try this technique and embrace the freedom to just doodle on your quilt! Before you begin grab a pad of paper and a pen and think about your design, don’t worry if you have to break thread to finish your design just go for it! This is the perfect technique to use on large blocks of negative space and you can use a contrasting colour or go bold and use the thread to “paint” your design.
Here is an example of my initial doodle on paper, and then me being me I just winged it when I switched to the machine, but the drawing really does help the brain to build muscle memory and to make it easier to create similar designs over on the fabric version.
I love stitching with Aurifil 50 or 40 wt threads and there are so many beautiful colours now available, I get mine from debs fabrics and barnyarns but it is becoming more widely stocked as people find the benefits of using it…. But this blog isn’t about my love of aurifil… so back to the graffiti quilting.
Make up a quilt sandwich to practice on, this is a 10” square from a Bella solids white layer cake, but imagine how great it would look on a darker fabric, it becomes the showpiece of the quilt.
To start with try to work round in a circle so that you can fill the space as your go, step by step build out your designs from the centre, then if you need to gap fill just echo the design (I can hear Angela Walters when I write that).
Try to vary your design elements, then when you get to the edges just fill in the gaps to finish the space off. This is the perfect way to practice lots of patterns and find the key designs that work for you. Don’t be afraid to try strange shapes then fill them with another pattern. My new toy is a set of wooden dice that I can add stickers to with particular styles of free motion elements so when I hit a block I can thrown them and carry on. After that first attempt with the colours I moved on to try a bit of graffiti on my Zen Chic Spring in Paris quilt along quilt, it had a huge negative space so it was great fun to fill this in.
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