Razzle Dazzle is a sparkly 8-weight polyester thread made by Superior Threads. Due to its thickness, it isn’t intended to be used in the sewing machine needle but to be used for couching or bobbin work.

When it comes to machine quilting, the stitches are visible on the front and the back. Good thread tension is critical.

Our final machine quilting practice session of the summer is a free-hand free-for-all: zendoodles!

Summer is almost over and so are our machine quilting practice sessions – only two more weeks to go! We are moving on to a new technique: free hand feathers.

For this practice session, we will try a design formed by echoing loops – one that I call “teardrops”.

We turn our attention this week to the fun and playful loop-de-loop background fill.

Echo quilting is another random free-motion background fill and the technique we will practice in session #6.

We have reached the midpoint of our summer machine quilting practice sessions! We now turn our attention to random free-motion background fills, beginning this week with stippling.

For our fourth machine quilting practice session, we will work on a star motif. This motif will be used in future sessions to practice background fills, so you will need to quilt it four times.

We are three weeks into our summer machine quilting practice sessions. This session, we will build on the half-circle shape from last week and practice the orange peel design.

Summer machine quilting practice sessions started last week with a straight line grid. This week, we move on to free motion quilting beginning with the classic clamshell design.

If you are serious about improving your machine quilting skills, you must practice. We begin our summer practice sessions with a straight line grid.

You will need a 20″ square of fabric for the quilt top and a 22″-24″ square of batting and backing fabric. Each “block” in the sampler is 6″ x 6″.

Each line of machine quilted stitching must be secured at the beginning and the end. But how?

Now that you’re ready to begin machine quilting, where do you start? A strategic approach can save you time and help you achieve great results.

In order to successfully machine quilt any size quilt on a home sewing machine, we don’t want the quilt to drag while we are stitching. Find out how to set up a workspace for machine quilting.

Making a practice quilt sandwich is, well, a good practice. The safety of the practice sandwich makes it possible to relax and test many things before you ever touch the actual quilt.

Before we begin machine quilting, we must choose needles and thread. The humble sewing machine needle plays a significant role in the success of our machine quilting; thread is an important design decision that has a huge impact on the look and feel of the completed quilt.

There are a variety of basting methods to choose from. When it comes to machine quilting, my preference is pin basting.

Find out how to choose backing fabric strategically to complement your machine quilting and take a peek at the back of some of my quilts!

Once we are ready to layer our quilt top with batting and backing fabric, what will we use? This week, we will consider our choices for quilt batting.

Here are some ways not to mark quilting designs on your quilt top.

Once we have decided on our machine quilting design, we may need to mark it on the quilt top. Here are some tools to help with this task.

We can audition quilt layouts in software like EQ7. We can audition fabrics on a design wall. But how can we audition quilting designs? Here are a few ideas.

I have just completed a quilt top and have been going through the exact machine quilting design process we have been talking about for the past ten weeks. Let’s use the quilt as an example and consider our options for its machine quilting design.

After nine posts on machine quilting design, there is still more! Yet another approach is to actually machine quilt the print in the fabric.

Quilters are continually looking for other creative machine quilting background fill options besides stippling. Here is a sampling of some more choices.

Stipple quilting is a continuous, curving line of stitching that never crosses over itself. It may very well be the most popular choice of machine quilted background fill.

We have been looking at various elements that can be incorporated into a custom fit quilting design. We continue our series on machine quilting this week by turning our attention to echo quilting.

As we consider the various elements that can be used in a custom fit machine quilting design, we turn our attention to straight line background fill.

The challenge with machine quilting motifs in borders is figuring out how to make them fit. Part 2 considers how to distribute the motifs evenly over the length of each border.

Positioning motifs on borders presents some unique challenges. As we consider how to design repeating motifs to fit a border, part 1 will focus on the border corner areas.

Motifs are commonly used within custom fit machine quilting designs. We continue our series on machine quilting this week with a look at quilting motifs.

Machine quilting designs can be custom fit to enhance individual elements in the quilt. We will divide custom fit designs into categories, beginning this week with machine quilting in the ditch.

Before we can begin machine quilting, we must choose our quilting designs. There are two main approaches and this article looks at one of them: allover machine quilting designs.

Quilting makes the quilt. I couldn’t agree more. It’s also my favorite machine quilting book in my library.

As we begin our new blog series on machine quilting, you may be wondering how I learned to quilt by machine. I am mostly self-taught and learned a great deal by reading books written by machine quilting experts. This post will give you a reading list to get you started.

This is one of the questions I am asked most frequently. It is such a big subject, I have decided to tackle the subject over the coming weeks in a new blog series on machine quilting.