Free Motion Quilting

Patsy Thompson is an expert, talented, generous machine quilter and she takes the fear out of machine quilting with her series of Free Motion Machine Quilting Videos shown below. She teaches, gives lectures and has created her own teaching DVD’s, and written books on free motion quilting.

Patsy offers her books, dvd’s, patterns, stencils and more on her website and she shows you step-by-step how she creates her gorgeous designs on her blog.

Here’s the first video in her beginner series – this one is about preparing to quilt. While Patsy prefers the small, portable (and expensive) quilting extension table, I prefer an inexpensive, LARGE surface for holding my quilts while I machine quilt. Below are two videos I made about DIY custom quilting table for machine quilting a large quilt. A flat surface is the difference between constant struggling to quilt and quilting easily. It can be the difference in being a beginner free motion quilter and a BETTER free motion quilter. Seriously.

Here’s Patsy’s second in her excellent series on free motion quilting, and halfway through she brings up an old and in my opinion, outdated, statement about stipple quilting: “You can’t cross the lines”. Well. Yes you can. And there are NO quilt police that are going to arrest you for doing it. You do what makes you happy on YOUR quilts. Her comments about loop-de-loop design and the heart/ivy leaf design is very true – these are some of the easiest and versatile designs, good for many quilts and borders.

More from Patsy about Spray Basting a Quilt:

How to Create Your OWN Custom Quilting Table:

Here’s how to adjust it for machine quilting a large quilt.