Free- Motion Quilting Sample
In this week’s blog I’ll take you through my free-motion quilting sample so you can try it out too!
As well as being a textile artist specialising in free-motion embroidery, I also sew accessories that are stocked in some local shops. The skills are similar, but creating items is a lot of straight, neat lines, and free-motion is the exact opposite. This week I wanted to do an experiment combining both elements, to create an abstract landscape sample.
Supplies I used:
Thread
4oz Polyester Wadding
Watercolours (brush and water)
Plain Fabric (I used a linen blend pillow case)
Sewing Machine with darning foot (free-motion foot, feed dogs covered or down)
I started by sewing a line all the way around my piece of fabric to attach it to wadding, this isn’t necessary but makes it much easier when creating all the other lines. I then created a wiggly line through the middle of the piece which would then become by guide for all my other lines to follow.
I was going for an abstract landscape design, so I wanted the lines to be fluid, mimicking how fields and the sky change and flow. I followed along the previous line to create the next but in areas the line is closer and in some is further away. The wadding being trapped by the thread of each line creates individual sections and further pushes the texture through to demonstrate the natural elements that I wanted to portray.
I then went in with watercolours on each of these sections, essentially like a colouring book, using a different colour for each part to add even more dimension.
Tah dah! I’m really happy with how this sample turned out and I learned a lot. Some of the watercolour ran from the fields to the sky, but the colour wasn’t the main goal, the process and application of the quilting was.
This is a technique I want to take up to a large scale and work it into the commission piece. This will not only add texture but will add dimesion and interest in so msny different areas.
Next week’s task will be putting this into practice on the actual commission piece!
Thank you for reading and following along, if you have a go at this technique yourself please tag me on Instagram @sebbystudios
-Jodie