How to Quilt The Easy Way

Join Paulette as she shows you our favorite quilting technique. It’s easy and looks great!

Video transcript:

Hi everyone, I’m Paulette Morrissey from Tulip Square and this week I’m going to show you something that we’ve had a few requests for, and that is how to simply quilt something that you’ve made, and you really don’t, you aren’t into free motion quilting and meandering or anything like that, you just want to know the best way to put your thing together and be done with it. So I’m going to show you one of the simplest methods we use and it’s just sewing along some of the seams. So we’re going to just head over to the sewing machine and I’m going to show you how that’s done.

All right we’ve had a number of people ask us how we quilt something if you don’t know how to do free motion, how can they get started making something that’s quilted without really knowing how to do free motion, and we like to show them that the easiest thing to do is what we do on most of our patterns, not because it’s not free motion but because we like the look of it. We like to take whatever it is you’re, the design of your what you’re sewing, and follow some of the stitch lines and do your quilting that way. Like on this one you could go up here and then down here and up here and go on the first line of each one of these, you could just go across the triangle, and go across the next triangle, whatever you want, but you follow whatever fabric cuts that you’ve made. So if you’ve got a walking foot use a walking foot. That’s what this is and I like to find some line on the walking foot that I can follow consistently. Like on this one I’m going to follow this little edge right here, trying to show you where the heck is, but I’m going to have this edge here line up with the edge of my seam, so I’m going to be sewing just a little bit like an eighth of an inch in from the seam and I’ll show you that. Get it right where I want it.

And then I’m just going to go up here, and down here, and over, and then across, and over, and cross, and just keep doing that. So let me show you a little bit of how that looks.

I’m just going to turn it, and I didn’t go quite far enough so I’m going to do one more stitch.

Now if you don’t have a walking foot you can obviously use another foot I just happen to like it. Now see how when I turn, this edge, this little piece right there, this edge right here is following right on the edge of that fabric. And my foot is going to be right there.

Swing it around, do a couple stitches, three is enough.

and I’m going to turn it, and I’m going to come back up this white rectangle same way.

When I turn it and I see that, that little edge, once again, it’s this edge right here, and if you wanted a bigger seam I could follow the edge here, and when I was going the other direction I would follow this edge, or this edge and your walking foot or your foot, whatever you’re using will have some, some linear lines on it that you can follow. They’re all different on every one of them. Just going to go down here, spin it around, with a short little seam here, three or four stitches is enough before I turn it, yup.

And always work from the center or the middle part of your your pattern towards the outside so you then you can always smooth it out like this and you don’t get a bunch of puckering. You don’t want to start from the outside and work your way in because if you’ve got any bunching fabric it’ll all end up in the middle and then you’ll have some nasty little lumps in here you can’t deal with, so work from the inside out. Now you can see how it’s starting to look with all the little lines all sewn, it’s a nice clean look, looks very nice, wears very well, lays nice and flat on your table, so I’m going to do this last little triangle and then I’m going to show you another thing you can try.

Okay now here’s something else you can do if you don’t want to go up and down and follow every every line you don’t care to do, I’m just going to go across these kind of like making a zigzag pattern and you can always do that and you can draw the lines in or you can make little marks that you can follow visually. I’m going to just estimate this because I’m just going to cross across three of these stripes and then I’m going to go back up this way and back down and just go back and forth. I’ll show you. I’ll start in this corner and I’m going to end here, but I’m going to end up here so when I sew my binding the point is here and not buried in the binding. So I’m going to end up about a quarter of an inch before the edge here.

Turn it, I’m going to go over three and end up at this top point, and this one I do go all the way to the point because the edge is already sewn, up to there.

Now if you can eyeball it, fine, if you can’t, you can put real light pencil lines that will barely be seen and once it’s washed it won’t be seen. I’m going to go back down here, crossing three of them and ending up down here, and I’m just peeking under here because I can see my guideline, so if I know that point is by the guideline, I’m just going to go just before the guideline.

Then up to the corner, cheater line there.

Then I’m just going to swing around, and down to this corner.

This part I’m sewing really close to the edge of the fabric because it’s going to be trimmed, it’s going to be hidden in the binding seam. So now I’m just going to come back up to this point, I’m going to criss cross back across over these. So I’m going to go back up here,

I’m going to swing back down over to this point, I’m just going back and forth and making big x’s on here kind of, going to go pass through three so where this one is at the point at the top there should be a point at the bottom.

And back up to the top, right to here, and down to the last point.

That’s how I would take care of this whole section. Kinda cute, now to finish this placement I would also go up and down on these white lines, back probably up and down, and you know down around the sides and down here that would be about it. Up and down all the white edges is about all I’d need to do, and then once it’s all done it would look like this. All done in the middle, stitching down here, around here, I’ve got stitching up here, up here, it’s got the binding on it of course, and I criss cross the little sides like so. There’s also, you could just do a straight grid you could just mark it off and do squares 2 inches across this pattern wouldn’t be perfect for that but other ones would be, where you can just do a grid go sew across a bunch of lines every two or three inches and then go up and down every two or three inches.

Okay so now you know how to do a really easy method of quilting your pieces so you don’t have to hesitate trying to make placemats or runners if you’re new to quilting, you don’t have to worry about learning a bunch of different methods of free motion or meandering or anything else, you don’t have to send your stuff out to be quilted by somebody else, you can just do this simple method and you’ve got some really nice looking pieces. They always look nice on the back, I don’t know if you can tell with all that plaid or anything, but I hope this video helps some of you get over the fear of quilting your pieces okay, so we’ll see you again next week. If you like this video please hit the like button hit the Subscribe button and remember we put out a new video every Saturday so we’ll see you again next week, bye-bye.