Happy Valentines! Heart Flow Machine Quilting Video on Two Machines
Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a lovely Heart Flow quilting design which you can quilt on both a home machine and longarm. See it demonstrated on both types of machines in this new machine quilting video!
Instructor
Leah Day
Leah Day is an online quilting teacher and founded LeahDay.com in 2009. She teaches quilting online via free YouTube videos and is also a dealer for Grace longarm machines and frames. Her mission is to empower and encourage quilters of all skill levels learn to make beautiful quilts.
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What is covered in Happy Valentines! Heart Flow Machine Quilting Video on Two Machines?
Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a lovely Heart Flow quilting design which you can quilt on both a home machine and longarm. See it demonstrated on both types of machines in this new machine quilting video!
How long is the tutorial video?
The tutorial video is 00:07:54.
Are supplies listed for this tutorial?
Yes. The tutorial page includes the supplies and materials connected to this project.
Is a transcript available?
Yes. A written transcript is available on the tutorial page.
Video Transcript
Hello my quilting friends! My name is Leah Day and welcome to this quilting tutorial for Heart Flow.
So this starts kind of like a heart on the like a heart balloon on the end of a wiggly tail. We stitch up and form that heart shape and now I'm gonna pivot off that point and swing around it for an echo. So this is a branching design we're forming, what basically is going to kind of be like a lock of cartoon hair and with a heart on the end.
So now I just travel stitch and that echo around that. And I'm going to build up maybe three or four echoes around this shape and that expands the design. It makes it take up more space on my quilt and it makes it stand out that much better.
So there we go. And I think the easiest way to move on with the design is
probably to stitch one more echo around it. So you can see how much space just one little heart flow shape can take up on your quilt and this is something that is going to cover your quilt really, really quickly. And that's really fun!
All right to move on with the design, I'm going to travel stitch away from this tip mostly because I built up so much thread right here I have an odd little area right here, probably not enough room to stitch a whole heart shape. So I want to kind of flow my line over this way so, let's do that.
I'm going to stitch that wiggly line and then end with a heart shape, just like so. Pivot off that tip and that tip is where I like to build up thread just a little bit just to add a little texture a little bit more interest to the design. And then now you can see I'm travel stitching all the way back I can fill in this little area with just simply more echoes.
So right now I'm just going to focus on travel stitching and echoing.
I'm just traveling against the edge of my quilting space, that's absolutely allowed. And then you know that might get a little bit boring filling in that hole area with just echoes. SoI'm going to just change the shape. What we're going to do is pretend like maybe there was another heart flow going off in another direction. You know and it's just off the edge of the quilt, you can't see it. So I can just change the direction and stitch some echoes going that way.
I hope you can see that this is definitely going to be a design where you build up thread. You get a lot of practice echoing and a lot of practice
travel stitching is what it's good for and practice makes perfect. You might not stitch it perfectly the first time, but I promise you if you stitch this on an entire quilt you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck. You're going to really get some great practice at echoing and travel stitching
So there we go. I built up that heart shape and then from here this is also
kind of a clustering style design as far as how it fills our quilts. I'll branch
off here in another direction and form another heart flow shape. That heart on the end of a wiggly line, like a heart balloon. just like so.
So now that we know how to stitch it on a small scale, let's give this a try on a real quilt on a much bigger scale. So now I'm on my Qnique 21x Elite long arm and we're giving Heart Flow a try. And I'll be honest, I have never tried a design like this. A design that's this complex on my long arm andI'm just going to go in ahead and apologize for it not being absolutely perfect. It's one of those things that control comes with time and practice. And yeah it's not going to come out exactly perfect, but I'm really pretty happy with that so far.
All right I don't have a lot of space, but I'm going to try and do one more echo. And part of the problem that I've had with a few of these heart-shaped designs is the fact that I you know have these little narrow areas to work in, in this Chain of Beads quilt.
It's not quite enough space, but here in this little weird area I can just go back and forth echoes and then that was going to allow me to travel stitch out and get to an area where I can then form a full shape and really be able to expand. So there we go, let's swirl out and make a nice long shape. Remember… long flowing line and then our heart-shaped balloon. So it's basically like a balloon on a string now swirl out, bump bump swirl, all the way back.
Now I got a little too fast there my machine blinked red at me so I got to be careful. You know it's so easy to swing out on this echo but I want to keep it slow and controlled. Even though my echo didn't stay consistent, I think my stitching is going to end up looking a little bit better. We're gonna go with some back and forth echoes through here here a little bit of travel stitching, keep holding my breath, do that a branch off in another direction here, and do a few back and forth echoes, just to fill in this like weird little gap area.
You are going to end up with weird spaces. That just happens. You know we quilt our quilts, the quilting design is meant to flow over the surface. The piecing design is usually the main star of the show and then quilting design has to fit around it you know fit and fill. And that means that you're gonna have to sometimes wiggle around and get into tight spaces and kind of figure out how you're going to quilt this. And don't ever hesitate to travel stitch back over a previous line - that's absolutely allowed!
And there goes my thread! So I actually ran out of top thread which is really unusual because I usually use really big spools of thread and I had finally run out of one that was several years old. So that was a really good thing and I'm going to squirrel my way out here getting around filling in that area all the way. And I think I'm going to shrink my scale down - I actually think that this will look better if I try the Heart Flow on a smaller scale on my long arm.
Now this is a design that does one to expand and have a lot of space between those lines but I think in a tight area like where I'm quilting it it needs to be a little smaller this is going to be a great design for all over quilting. If you've got a bed quilt that you want to just stitch it up a notch get this nice flowing texture, it's going to be a great choice for that. But whenever you have tight areas you're going to have to shrink the design down in order to be able to see that texture, in order to be able to stitch it and have it look nice.
This is just my opinion you know looking at it, picking out some stitches,
really studying what the design looked like. I just really wasn't quite as happy stitching it on this quilt as I have than the other heart designs that we've tackled. Not being perfectly honest, you know I can look at my stitching and be a little bit critical of it and say yeah that probably wasn't the best choice and that's okay. We can't know these things until we actually stitch it out and I know that I have definitely learned something here today and for that I am grateful.
So I hope that you have enjoyed this video. If you'd like to find more videos free motion quilting of both a home sewing machine and on a long arm come and check out my website leahday.com. Until next time, let's go
quilt!
So this starts kind of like a heart on the like a heart balloon on the end of a wiggly tail. We stitch up and form that heart shape and now I'm gonna pivot off that point and swing around it for an echo. So this is a branching design we're forming, what basically is going to kind of be like a lock of cartoon hair and with a heart on the end.
So now I just travel stitch and that echo around that. And I'm going to build up maybe three or four echoes around this shape and that expands the design. It makes it take up more space on my quilt and it makes it stand out that much better.
So there we go. And I think the easiest way to move on with the design is
probably to stitch one more echo around it. So you can see how much space just one little heart flow shape can take up on your quilt and this is something that is going to cover your quilt really, really quickly. And that's really fun!
All right to move on with the design, I'm going to travel stitch away from this tip mostly because I built up so much thread right here I have an odd little area right here, probably not enough room to stitch a whole heart shape. So I want to kind of flow my line over this way so, let's do that.
I'm going to stitch that wiggly line and then end with a heart shape, just like so. Pivot off that tip and that tip is where I like to build up thread just a little bit just to add a little texture a little bit more interest to the design. And then now you can see I'm travel stitching all the way back I can fill in this little area with just simply more echoes.
So right now I'm just going to focus on travel stitching and echoing.
I'm just traveling against the edge of my quilting space, that's absolutely allowed. And then you know that might get a little bit boring filling in that hole area with just echoes. SoI'm going to just change the shape. What we're going to do is pretend like maybe there was another heart flow going off in another direction. You know and it's just off the edge of the quilt, you can't see it. So I can just change the direction and stitch some echoes going that way.
I hope you can see that this is definitely going to be a design where you build up thread. You get a lot of practice echoing and a lot of practice
travel stitching is what it's good for and practice makes perfect. You might not stitch it perfectly the first time, but I promise you if you stitch this on an entire quilt you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck. You're going to really get some great practice at echoing and travel stitching
So there we go. I built up that heart shape and then from here this is also
kind of a clustering style design as far as how it fills our quilts. I'll branch
off here in another direction and form another heart flow shape. That heart on the end of a wiggly line, like a heart balloon. just like so.
So now that we know how to stitch it on a small scale, let's give this a try on a real quilt on a much bigger scale. So now I'm on my Qnique 21x Elite long arm and we're giving Heart Flow a try. And I'll be honest, I have never tried a design like this. A design that's this complex on my long arm andI'm just going to go in ahead and apologize for it not being absolutely perfect. It's one of those things that control comes with time and practice. And yeah it's not going to come out exactly perfect, but I'm really pretty happy with that so far.
All right I don't have a lot of space, but I'm going to try and do one more echo. And part of the problem that I've had with a few of these heart-shaped designs is the fact that I you know have these little narrow areas to work in, in this Chain of Beads quilt.
It's not quite enough space, but here in this little weird area I can just go back and forth echoes and then that was going to allow me to travel stitch out and get to an area where I can then form a full shape and really be able to expand. So there we go, let's swirl out and make a nice long shape. Remember… long flowing line and then our heart-shaped balloon. So it's basically like a balloon on a string now swirl out, bump bump swirl, all the way back.
Now I got a little too fast there my machine blinked red at me so I got to be careful. You know it's so easy to swing out on this echo but I want to keep it slow and controlled. Even though my echo didn't stay consistent, I think my stitching is going to end up looking a little bit better. We're gonna go with some back and forth echoes through here here a little bit of travel stitching, keep holding my breath, do that a branch off in another direction here, and do a few back and forth echoes, just to fill in this like weird little gap area.
You are going to end up with weird spaces. That just happens. You know we quilt our quilts, the quilting design is meant to flow over the surface. The piecing design is usually the main star of the show and then quilting design has to fit around it you know fit and fill. And that means that you're gonna have to sometimes wiggle around and get into tight spaces and kind of figure out how you're going to quilt this. And don't ever hesitate to travel stitch back over a previous line - that's absolutely allowed!
And there goes my thread! So I actually ran out of top thread which is really unusual because I usually use really big spools of thread and I had finally run out of one that was several years old. So that was a really good thing and I'm going to squirrel my way out here getting around filling in that area all the way. And I think I'm going to shrink my scale down - I actually think that this will look better if I try the Heart Flow on a smaller scale on my long arm.
Now this is a design that does one to expand and have a lot of space between those lines but I think in a tight area like where I'm quilting it it needs to be a little smaller this is going to be a great design for all over quilting. If you've got a bed quilt that you want to just stitch it up a notch get this nice flowing texture, it's going to be a great choice for that. But whenever you have tight areas you're going to have to shrink the design down in order to be able to see that texture, in order to be able to stitch it and have it look nice.
This is just my opinion you know looking at it, picking out some stitches,
really studying what the design looked like. I just really wasn't quite as happy stitching it on this quilt as I have than the other heart designs that we've tackled. Not being perfectly honest, you know I can look at my stitching and be a little bit critical of it and say yeah that probably wasn't the best choice and that's okay. We can't know these things until we actually stitch it out and I know that I have definitely learned something here today and for that I am grateful.
So I hope that you have enjoyed this video. If you'd like to find more videos free motion quilting of both a home sewing machine and on a long arm come and check out my website leahday.com. Until next time, let's go
quilt!
