Super Beginner Night Light Machine Quilting Design Tutorial with Leah Day
Learn how to quilt a super easy, super beginner machine quilting design called Night Light. Leah Day shows you how to stitch this design edge-to-edge on a home machine on the Cutie Frame on the Daisy Loops Quilt Panel.
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.
Chapters
Common Questions
What is covered in Super Beginner Night Light Machine Quilting Design Tutorial with Leah Day?
Learn how to quilt a super easy, super beginner machine quilting design called Night Light. Leah Day shows you how to stitch this design edge-to-edge on a home machine on the Cutie Frame on the Daisy Loops Quilt Panel.
How long is the tutorial video?
The tutorial video is 00:05:00.
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 I am teaching you a new quilting design today. This is NightLight and I am drawing it for you first here, so that way you can see how this works when stitched in rows.
So this is how I stitch most designs. I kind of work it kind of a little bit up and a little bit down and a little bit over and generally work my way across a quilt stitching in rows. This machine quilting design will work best in your quilts on a home sewing machine whether it's a sit down stationary machine or it's on a frame.
So let's get to the design. This is basically zippling combined with star
shapes. Stars are going to be super super easy to draw if you are used to drawing that kind of star, this kind of triangle and then another triangle another triangle, kind of star I drew that a lot as a kid. You might not have, so give that some practice. Zippling is basically stippling with straight lanes and sharp angles and they can be any angle that you want. Nice sharp angles looks best.
And so I'm just drawing this in here and you can see I've started this third row of Night Light. Very, very simple. Very easy design. I would put this at a super beginner level meaning that I think that quilters of all skill levels can stitch this. Now you may not have very straight lines at first, and that's okay. So if you find that it's easier to stitch this with stippling or loopy line instead of zippling that is A-Okay.
So now that we have seen it drawn, we understand the fundamentals of this design. Let's get on a real machine and see how to stitch it together.
So I have a baby quilt loaded up here on my home machine quilting setup. My Cutie quilting frame is a collapsible frame, so you can pull it out, get your quilt quilted and then put it away. It actually can store under your
bed or in the closet very easily. I have a home sewing machine set up here on top and I am using a speed controller. It's down here on the handlebars to control the speed of the machine.
So now let's quilt our Night Light design into this baby quilt. So I'm going to get into that Machine quilting night light on a Cutie Frame. Zippling design is just zigzaggy lines and. I think in terms of like lightning bolts
and if I have to I'll box it and make it blocky and that's okay too, but I aim to go with sharp angles because right angles I'm stitching another design. So really aiming for that zippling effect and then every once in a while, once I feel like I have enough space and distance from my last star, then I will go into a star shape. This is so easy to quilt. It's so easy to move the machine on the Cutie, that I find myself pushing too quickly and I get bigger stitches and that's what happened right here. So I have to remind myself that even when it feels really, really easy, I have to maintain a
nice steady speed. A speed controller is basically just a start/stop button for your machine. It runs the machine at a steady set speed so it's running just at one speed right now and if I wanted to I could put a stitch regulator on and then that would actually change the speed of the machine based on how fast I'm moving. So those are two different devices that we can use to control the speed on our machine. But so far I can say I really,
really like this. I think that this is working out pretty good. I just have to
remind myself, especially when I'm going into that star like right here. I'm going into that star shape, keep it slow, keep it steady, because it's such it's just a design, it's a shape that I've just drawn so many times that it's very, very comfortable for me. That's why I can stitch it so quickly and fluidly.
So yeah great design! As you can see this is a great edge to edge all over style design you can quilt it on a large scale very quickly. It's going to fill your quilts with a nice zigzaggy kind of angular texture and it also gives you some practice on zippling as well, which I think is a great design to put on little boy quilts. It's very masculine, so lots of fun cool design. I hope you enjoyed learning how to quilt Night Light.
So this is how I stitch most designs. I kind of work it kind of a little bit up and a little bit down and a little bit over and generally work my way across a quilt stitching in rows. This machine quilting design will work best in your quilts on a home sewing machine whether it's a sit down stationary machine or it's on a frame.
So let's get to the design. This is basically zippling combined with star
shapes. Stars are going to be super super easy to draw if you are used to drawing that kind of star, this kind of triangle and then another triangle another triangle, kind of star I drew that a lot as a kid. You might not have, so give that some practice. Zippling is basically stippling with straight lanes and sharp angles and they can be any angle that you want. Nice sharp angles looks best.
And so I'm just drawing this in here and you can see I've started this third row of Night Light. Very, very simple. Very easy design. I would put this at a super beginner level meaning that I think that quilters of all skill levels can stitch this. Now you may not have very straight lines at first, and that's okay. So if you find that it's easier to stitch this with stippling or loopy line instead of zippling that is A-Okay.
So now that we have seen it drawn, we understand the fundamentals of this design. Let's get on a real machine and see how to stitch it together.
So I have a baby quilt loaded up here on my home machine quilting setup. My Cutie quilting frame is a collapsible frame, so you can pull it out, get your quilt quilted and then put it away. It actually can store under your
bed or in the closet very easily. I have a home sewing machine set up here on top and I am using a speed controller. It's down here on the handlebars to control the speed of the machine.
So now let's quilt our Night Light design into this baby quilt. So I'm going to get into that Machine quilting night light on a Cutie Frame. Zippling design is just zigzaggy lines and. I think in terms of like lightning bolts
and if I have to I'll box it and make it blocky and that's okay too, but I aim to go with sharp angles because right angles I'm stitching another design. So really aiming for that zippling effect and then every once in a while, once I feel like I have enough space and distance from my last star, then I will go into a star shape. This is so easy to quilt. It's so easy to move the machine on the Cutie, that I find myself pushing too quickly and I get bigger stitches and that's what happened right here. So I have to remind myself that even when it feels really, really easy, I have to maintain a
nice steady speed. A speed controller is basically just a start/stop button for your machine. It runs the machine at a steady set speed so it's running just at one speed right now and if I wanted to I could put a stitch regulator on and then that would actually change the speed of the machine based on how fast I'm moving. So those are two different devices that we can use to control the speed on our machine. But so far I can say I really,
really like this. I think that this is working out pretty good. I just have to
remind myself, especially when I'm going into that star like right here. I'm going into that star shape, keep it slow, keep it steady, because it's such it's just a design, it's a shape that I've just drawn so many times that it's very, very comfortable for me. That's why I can stitch it so quickly and fluidly.
So yeah great design! As you can see this is a great edge to edge all over style design you can quilt it on a large scale very quickly. It's going to fill your quilts with a nice zigzaggy kind of angular texture and it also gives you some practice on zippling as well, which I think is a great design to put on little boy quilts. It's very masculine, so lots of fun cool design. I hope you enjoyed learning how to quilt Night Light.
