Advent day 18 – Let’s quilt

Here are the remaining materials to quilt our quilt. We have the quilt top done and the backing was cut yesterday.

Sandwich

With the 505 glue stick you can make a quilt sandwich. The Odif team showed me this new product last year and I was curious to try it. They explained to glue on the batting and then paste the fabric on top.

This placemat was a perfect little project to use it. At first the glue looks blue, so you can see very well where you applied the glue.

To make your sandwich, glue on one side of the batting and place this in the center of the backing fabric.

Then glue on the other side of the batting and place your quilt top in the center of the batting.

Thread

You will now have multiple different threads. The Cotton 30 wt, this is a thicker thread, I love how quilted stitches look with this thread. It gives a little more texture, the stitches are more visible with this thread. When quilting with 30wt cotton I like to set my stitch length a little bit larger.

There also is a regular, Cotton 50wt thread. This is the one we used for the piecing. I would recommend to keep this one in your bobbin. Also if you use the 30wt or the rayon as top thread.

And then then there is a more shiny Rayon. This one gives a very subtle shimmer to your quilted lines.

All thread are great for quilting. It just comes down to personal preference. Pick the one you like best, be creative. This is a great small project to try new things.

Straight line quilting

First of all, feel free to choose any quilting style for your placemats. I will give two ideas here, one with free motion quilting, and one with straight line quilting.

For the straight line quilting you need some preparations. You can use the temporary marker for this. I’ve always been a little bit hesitant to use these markers. What if they don’t erase?

But for this quilt I just went all out. I marked my whole quilt with purple lines. And they all disappeared just fine after using a damp cloth after quilting!

Mark the lines

To quilt straight lines in a diamond shape you need to mark some lines under an angle.

When you look closely to the image below, you will see the 60 degree line on my ruler lined up with the bottom line of the striped border.

Mark your first line with your ruler in this position.

The you move the ruler. Make sure the 60 degree angle line is still aligned with the striped border. But shift the ruler so that the new line you’re going to draw is 1 inch from the first line.

After you marked some lines in this direction you start marking in the other direction.

In the image below you see the 60 degree angle line now being aligned with the bottom border.

Quilting

Mark a few lines in this direction and start quilting.

You don’t have to mark all the lines in one go. Some temporary marked fade after a while. So it’s sometimes better to mark a few lines, quilt them, and then mark the next lines.

When your sewing machine has a seam guide you can mark less lines and use the guide to quilt your line 1 inch apart.

I like to use a walking foot when doing straight line quilting. It keeps all the layers together really well while quilting.

After you’re done quilting, you can trim the edges. Make sure to cut the corners to 90 degree angles.

I used a damp/wet cloth to wipe away the purple lines.

Free motion quilting

My other placemat is quilted with free motion quilting. With the Christmas / Winter theme I chose wavy lines with little loops. They made me think of snowflakes. The shiny rayon was a great match for this quilt design.

To practice this design you can take a test piece to quilt on. Start with lines from top to bottom that just go down. Straight is not the goal, since we are going to make them wavy any way.

When you have the feeling of moving from to to bottom on your quilt you make the lines more wavy.

After that you can start adding loops every now and then.

Top to bottom and back

When I quilted one line, I turned my placemat 180 degrees. Travel stitched a little bit to the side and then made the next line.

I found the movement in this direction the easiest. But of course, with free motion quilting you don’t have to rotate your work. You could just go down, up, down up etc.

And here is the finished free motion quilted place mat!

Adding color

A little hint: There will be an addition to the quilting on day 20. Whit that you can add a pop of color to the quilting. So no need to go crazy in quilting a lot of details just yet.

See you in two days!