Free Motion Quilting – Embellished Towels
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Working on your Fee-Motion Quilting skills? This Free Motion Quilted Hand Towel Tutorial Is just what you need to help improve your quilting skills!
Ever since I started dabbling in quilting, free motion quilting has been on my list of things to learn.
Over the holidays, I ordered a generic quilting/darning foot to fit my machine. I figured I should start with a small project, and thought a cute and girly set of hand towels for my daughter’s bathroom would be perfect. (I also used this technique on her tooth fairy pillow as well.)
I grabbed a set of 4 towels on my last trip to Wal-mart and while I was there, found this cute little fat quarter set of coordinating pink and brown fabrics.
Adding the fabric to the towels was super easy, you’ll love the results!
Free Motion Quilted Towel Tutorial:
Cut a piece of fabric about an inch taller and wider than your towel.
Fold the edges of the 2 long sides and one short side over 1/4 inch and iron them flat.
Pin the fabric in place, lining up the one ironed short side with the side of the towel and fold the other side in/under to line up with the other side of the towel.
Then, sew along the edge of the fabric about 1/8 inch form the edge, all the way around the towel.
If you want to try a little quilting yourself, make sure you are using quilting needles (they are very sharp), otherwise you may have problems with your bobbin thread getting tangled up and not looking pretty.
Here is a shot of the quilting foot. The presser foot is all the way in the down position, notice how high up it sits? This makes it much easier to move the fabric around. (Make sure you lower the feed dogs too.)
I am not very artistic, so my loops and swirls are pretty sad looking, but when you use a thread that blends better you can’t even tell…
It’s hard to see in these pictures, but I quilted different patterns on each towel. (Actually, I left the photo below fairly large. To see the details better, right click and open the picture in a new window an you can see it up close. This function only works when you are reading on my blog page- not in a reader or the email version.)
I traced the floral design on the floral fabric.
I love the free motion quilting for small projects like this, but I’m not 100% sure I would do it on a full or queen size quilt. It seems like it might take longer or be more difficult than straight line quilting.
What do you think? Have you free motion quilted a large quilt on a regular sewing machine? I would love to hear how it went for you or just get more advice…
Looking for more easy Quilt projects? Check these out too!
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