Let's Spring into Free Motion Quilting with this Dandelion Puff Design
Today Leah Day is finishing up her Spring into Free Motion Quilting mini series! She'll show you how to free motion quilt Dandelion Puff together on a stationary home sewing machine and a Qnique 19X Elite longarm on a frame.
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 Let's Spring into Free Motion Quilting with this Dandelion Puff Design?
Today Leah Day is finishing up her Spring into Free Motion Quilting mini series! She'll show you how to free motion quilt Dandelion Puff together on a stationary home sewing machine and a Qnique 19X Elite longarm on a frame.
How long is the tutorial video?
The tutorial video is 00:04:59.
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 we are quilting Dandelion Puff today.
So this starts out with a wiggly line and then you stitch some teardrop shapes on the end to create a little dandelion puff cluster just like
that. Now you're gonna echo back to your starting point, in this case, more of those dandelion puff shapes and then I'm going to travel stitch over and echo around it so the echoing allows the design to stand out.
It fills up space and it kind of separates one shape from another. It gives you a little bit of a buffer. And you can go around and around that as many times as you like. I kind of like two times - that looks pretty good.
And then I branch off in another direction and form another dandelion puff shape. Very simple, very easy. I think this is going to be a great design to stitch on your springtime bed quilts!
All right let's give this a go on a unique 19x Elite long arm on the evolution hoop frame. So I'm going to start out with my wiggly line and then I'm going into my teardrops, my little dandelion top shape. That looks great! I am really happy with how much control I have over this machine, but I will add I have a little bit of a cheat. I'm gonna pause real quick, I have put my little frame weight. This is my extra heavy, very small frame weight. I filled this full of BBS. So yeah, that is adding extra weight down onto the quilt and that is giving me just a little bit more control here.
So that way I can form these shapes nicely and do really nice travel stitching when I need to. So there we go. I form my starting shape, now I travel stitch or sorry echo all the way back. Travel stitch along the shape before and then now I'm gonna wiggle around with an echo. I'm just going to keep this nice and controlled.
So you could make this really big. In fact, actually you can see how big I
stitched this one over here. These want to expand, they really do want
to expand and spread out. I would say the biggest one you know probably
12 to 14 inches long. You could really cover lots of quilting space with every pass with one of these and have no problem with that. The biggest issue is you know just that little bit of travel stitching at the beginning and then just maintaining your echoes.
So here I'm coming back around. We'll shrink it down and form a smaller shape. So here I'm going to wiggle off in this direction and bounce around it. I actually think I'm too close to the edge of my frame limit. Yeah I'm probably going to be getting too close here and I won't be able to complete this one.
You might be wondering, what you do when that happens. If I was on a real quilt, I would probably advance the quilt through the frame so that way I could complete the design, you know be able to stitch further down. But you know if I can get one set of echoes around this just like that then I'm going to consider that perfectly fine. So don't worry about it if you hit the edges of the frame. You can always just advance your quilt forward, no big deal.
So now we'll go this way and I'll make these really big. It is a really fun freeform and very creative design. So this is going to be something that is going to look great in a springtime quilt, beautiful baby quilt, or throw quilt. I just think it adds that extra touch of flowing, you know spring cheerfulness. I love that. So there is a nice big flower and you know you could make that even bigger. If I expanded that and made that starting flower you know six inches wide, which I easily could, then it's going to take up that much more space and really stand out that much more on your quilt.
So now it's just a simple process of just echoing around, no right or wrong
way of doing it. And the wonderful thing about this design is it is just so
forgiving you know. You can mess up on this wobbly echo and no one's going to be able to point at your quilt and say oh that was a mistake. Say it's organic! It's meant to be that way and that is wonderful. I love designs that are just free-form and forgiving like this.
So this starts out with a wiggly line and then you stitch some teardrop shapes on the end to create a little dandelion puff cluster just like
that. Now you're gonna echo back to your starting point, in this case, more of those dandelion puff shapes and then I'm going to travel stitch over and echo around it so the echoing allows the design to stand out.
It fills up space and it kind of separates one shape from another. It gives you a little bit of a buffer. And you can go around and around that as many times as you like. I kind of like two times - that looks pretty good.
And then I branch off in another direction and form another dandelion puff shape. Very simple, very easy. I think this is going to be a great design to stitch on your springtime bed quilts!
All right let's give this a go on a unique 19x Elite long arm on the evolution hoop frame. So I'm going to start out with my wiggly line and then I'm going into my teardrops, my little dandelion top shape. That looks great! I am really happy with how much control I have over this machine, but I will add I have a little bit of a cheat. I'm gonna pause real quick, I have put my little frame weight. This is my extra heavy, very small frame weight. I filled this full of BBS. So yeah, that is adding extra weight down onto the quilt and that is giving me just a little bit more control here.
So that way I can form these shapes nicely and do really nice travel stitching when I need to. So there we go. I form my starting shape, now I travel stitch or sorry echo all the way back. Travel stitch along the shape before and then now I'm gonna wiggle around with an echo. I'm just going to keep this nice and controlled.
So you could make this really big. In fact, actually you can see how big I
stitched this one over here. These want to expand, they really do want
to expand and spread out. I would say the biggest one you know probably
12 to 14 inches long. You could really cover lots of quilting space with every pass with one of these and have no problem with that. The biggest issue is you know just that little bit of travel stitching at the beginning and then just maintaining your echoes.
So here I'm coming back around. We'll shrink it down and form a smaller shape. So here I'm going to wiggle off in this direction and bounce around it. I actually think I'm too close to the edge of my frame limit. Yeah I'm probably going to be getting too close here and I won't be able to complete this one.
You might be wondering, what you do when that happens. If I was on a real quilt, I would probably advance the quilt through the frame so that way I could complete the design, you know be able to stitch further down. But you know if I can get one set of echoes around this just like that then I'm going to consider that perfectly fine. So don't worry about it if you hit the edges of the frame. You can always just advance your quilt forward, no big deal.
So now we'll go this way and I'll make these really big. It is a really fun freeform and very creative design. So this is going to be something that is going to look great in a springtime quilt, beautiful baby quilt, or throw quilt. I just think it adds that extra touch of flowing, you know spring cheerfulness. I love that. So there is a nice big flower and you know you could make that even bigger. If I expanded that and made that starting flower you know six inches wide, which I easily could, then it's going to take up that much more space and really stand out that much more on your quilt.
So now it's just a simple process of just echoing around, no right or wrong
way of doing it. And the wonderful thing about this design is it is just so
forgiving you know. You can mess up on this wobbly echo and no one's going to be able to point at your quilt and say oh that was a mistake. Say it's organic! It's meant to be that way and that is wonderful. I love designs that are just free-form and forgiving like this.
