Machine Quilting Workshop

I have had an awesome day.  Several weeks ago Mum called me and asked me if I wanted to do a Free Motion Machine Quilting Workshop with her and a group of her friends.  I haven't done any machine quilting for a few years so was a bit apprehensive, but I decided to give it a go.  It was today.

The teacher was a lady by the name of Lorraine Cocker.  She was absolutely lovely.  She normally runs this workshop over 2 days, but because we were a special group (we had specifically requested her to come in and we only had the space for one day) we crammed as much as we could into one day.  It made it pretty exhausting, but we learned a lot.

She taught us several different techniques for free motion quilting, different ways to get the pattern on the fabric, different techniques for stippling and random patterns. We had a shot at several of them, starting with some basics.

We started with a few random techniques and just practising getting used to the feel of free motion quilting (about half of the others had done some basic stippling and the other half of us had not).  I was using one of Mums machines which was absolutely beautiful to use.  I can not wait until I can afford to buy myself a new machine.  :o)

The first thing we did after the random techniques was this clam:

The was just done by tracing the shape onto the fabric with the blue water soluble pens then sewing straight onto the shape.

From there we started a "quilting sampler" by splitting a 21" square (calico/wadding/calico) into eighths using different fancy stitches to separate the sections.

The we started doing different techniques.  Here are a few:

The end result was:

It still needs to be finished, and a lot of it is messy, but for my first ever go at any of these techniques I am really pleased with it.  We also did some reverse quilting where you put a picture fabric as the backing fabric and quilt around the shapes, which gives you the shapes on the front.  This one was really fun (although didn't photograph too well) and a technique I will definitely be using.

I had a fantastic day and am super pumped to get my Bento Block quilts done so I can do some machine quilting on an actual quilt.  I will  be going to Mum's and using her machine for the quilting as my old clunker isn't really up to the task, but of course I have to get mine back from the shop first (it is being serviced) so that I can actually do the quilt tops.

I am now completely exhausted but really happy with what I have done and re-energised about my quilting.

xox