Tips for Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) on Fleece

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

I’m sew excited you stopped by today! After doing those fall quilt tutorials a few weeks ago, I am trying to now get them all quilted before I dive into making more quilt tops (my projects seem to be multiplying daily). Do you quilt your own quilts or do you send them out to a long arm quilter? If you do your own quilting, do you hand or machine quilt?

My Machine Quilting Journey

I started machine quilting right after I learned to do patchwork almost 25 years ago. Of course, first I tried to “stitch in the ditch” but I found I couldn’t manage to actually stay in the ditch. Ho hum……

I did try a little hand quilting on my very first quilt, which I lovingly call “Big Ugly”, but my stitches were so big, I could’ve probably caught my toe in them. LOL!

Eventually I heard about a relatively newfangled thing called free motion quilting (FMQ). I was a new enough quilter that I wasn’t afraid to try it. Of course, back then free motion quilting was frowned upon and free motion quilters tried for a hand quilted look by using invisible monofilament thread to hide their machine stitching. The invisible thread back then was like thin fishing line — yuck! But I still slogged through — learning how to free motion quilt with a basic sewing machine on which I had to cover the feed dogs with tape or an index card because the feed dogs didn’t drop. And don’t forget that fishing line (today’s invisible thread is so so much better than back then)! Regardless of the challenges, I kept free motion quilting. And I was hooked!

After I had some quilts under my belt and I upgraded to a little better sewing machine where I could actually drop the feed dogs — it had a needle-down function too, I switched to using the same thread I pieced with — 100% cotton. I experimented with different threads and manufacturers for a while to see what I liked the best, or maybe more accurately what threads my sewing machine liked the best. Then I discovered King Tut variegated thread by Superior Threads. WOW! What fun it was quilting with variegated thread! I grabbed up every variegated thread spool I found, which was especially fun when I went on shop hops and quilting bus trips with my quilty pals.

The only real problem I found working with those yummy variegated threads was that sometimes I lost the thread on the quilt because the thread color matched the quilt exactly. Then it kind of looked like I skipped part of the quilting design. Oh well, nothing’s perfect.

This was when I moved back to working with solid 100% cotton threads. Now I have a small six drawer unit on wheels with all my spools of thread organized by color or type. And yes, the top drawer even has my collection of variegated threads. My drawer unit is the Helmer unit from Ikea.

Free Motion Quilting on Fleece

Today I have a fun little video for you with some great tips for free motion quilting a quilt top backed with fleece fabric (you know — the fleece you make tied blankies with or comfy pj pants out of?). I began free motion quilting on fleece long before even Minky was popular as a quilt backing. I guess I was ahead of my time a little bit. Of course, back then, folks kind of looked at me funny when I showed off my free motion quilted quilts backed with fleece. Boy, they didn’t know what they were missing!

There is nothing like curling up with a fleece-backed quilt. Be aware that I don’t put batting in my fleece-backed throw quilts. Nope, not at all. Skipping the batting makes my fleece-backed throw quilts very cozy and super floppy — which I love! Have you ever tried machine quilting with fleece on the back of your quilt?

A friend of mine, Cheryl, who is a free motion long arm quilter, took my quilting on fleece idea even further — she layers 2 pieces of fleece and free motion quilts them together to make a one of a kind textured throw blanket. Maybe you’ll try this too.

Now — on with the show!

Oops! I see in the video that I actually did cross over some lines. Mea culpa! Luckily, I didn’t get any mischief happening on the back of my quilt. I should haven stuck with my first choice of orange thread instead of the medium chestnut brown, which blended in too much on the quilt top. LOL!

Go HERE for the Alassio tutorial. Or HERE to purchase the Alassio pattern.

Go HERE to read our VRQ post, Quilt as Desired, which is all about machine quilting and is part of our Basic Skills for Quilters Series on the blog.

I hope you enjoyed this little video. Now that I know how to create one and upload it, you might just find more little videos here. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Until next Thursday —

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @VRD