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Walking Foot Quilting Design for Simply Woven

  • Writer: vafibrearts
    vafibrearts
  • May 24, 2021
  • 8 min read

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!


Last week, I shared some of my recent research into common walking foot quilting designs, and this week, it's time to apply that research to Simply Woven!


For those of you who don't know, Simply Woven is the oldest of my UFOs. The pattern was originally designed in 2012 by Jess Kelly of Sew Crafty Jess, and is available as a free pattern on the Moda blog.

My Grandma started this quilt around that time, at a class run through the local quilt guild. Unfortunately, she had too many projects on her hands and Simply Woven was set aside with only a handful of blocks completed.


Several years later, in 2016, she overheard my partner jokingly ask why I hadn't started a quilt for him. Of course, the reason was that I had only started quilting the year before and hadn't had enough time to seriously consider making him one, but Grandma leapt at the opportunity to find this quilt a good home.

Since then, the quilt top has been completed, the backing pieced, and the layers basted! If you're interested in the backing and basting, check out my basting research and basting demo posts from earlier this spring!


The next step towards completing Simply Woven is the quilting, which has spurred me into this research in the first place. This week, I'll be sharing my process for designing a unique walking foot quilting pattern specifically for this quilt, as well as some of the tips I picked up in my research which influenced my decisions! So let's jump in!



Tips for Walking Foot Quilt Design


When customizing your own quilting design, there are a few things to keep in mind. These are some tips I picked up during my research and experience designing the quilting for Rainbow Railfence.


Note that all of these are suggestions only, there are no particular rules when it comes to quilting design.


Before you Start Planning

It can be a really great idea to start learning about and collecting quilting designs before you even have a project ready to start quilting. Learning about and practising quilting designs in advance will help you to build confidence in your skills, and make you a better quilter!

  • Take note of quilting designs that interest you at shows, in samples, or online. Drawing them in a sketchbook or project journal is a great way to record them for later use, and can help you understand how one single line of quilting can make an interesting design! Here's something I drew while learning about matchstick quilting:

  • Practice quilting new designs. Make a 10" square (or larger) quilt sandwich from excess fabric and batting to practice new quilting designs. This will help to improve your quilting skills, and give you the hands on experience to decide if the final result is worth the effort. As with all things, quilting takes practice, and the more time you spend practising, the better you'll get!

  • Try every design. There are an infinite variety of quilting designs in the world, when you stumble across a new one, make a test square to try it out. You may be surprised to find that some designs that appear complicated are actually very fun and easy!

Thinking About Design

When designing a quilting pattern, think about what you want it to do. The main function of quilting is to hold the layers of a quilt together through many years of love and use.

  • Check the packaging on your batting to see what the recommended quilting density is. As a quilt is used, the batting will begin to stretch and pull apart if there isn't enough quilting to hold everything in place.


While quilting is used to hold the layers of a quilt together, it also functions as a design element. It can be used to emphasize specific areas of a quilt that you love, create intricate primary designs, or simply hold the layers together.

  • If you're not yet confident in your skills, keep your design simple. Picking a single design to use all over the quilt will look great!

  • If your quilt has a lot of bold and busy piecing, a simple all over design will hold the quilt together while not distracting from the piecing.

  • If there's a particular block you'd like to emphasize, you can use the quilting to draw attention to it. Try an all over design for most of the quilt, but for your special block, switch your quilting to another design. Can you tell what block I want to emphasize in this Bird of Paradise sample?

  • If your quilt has minimal piecing and a lot of negative space, you may want to use quilting to create visual interest in that space. You could fill it with a detailed pattern, or even quilt designs that mimic the shape of the piecing elsewhere in the quilt.

  • You can create cohesion between the piecing and quilting by quilting designs that reference the shapes of the piecing. You could also do the opposite to create visual tension, such as quilting triangles over a quilt with circular piecing.


Regardless of what design you choose for your quilt, make sure the whole quilt is done in an even density. Quilting density refers to the amount of quilting in an area; high density has a lot of quilting, while low density has very little. If any area of the quilt has significantly more quilting than other areas, it will shrink a lot more and warp the shape of the quilt.


Planning Thread

Part of a quilting design is the thread colour and weight you choose to use. Both of these factors affect how visible quilting lines will be on the finished quilt.

  • Pick a matching thread colour if you want your quilting to blend in, or a contrasting colour to make it stand out.

  • Thicker thread will be more visible on a finished quilt than finer thread. If colour alone doesn't make your quilting stand out the way you want it to, try a thicker thread.


A Design that Makes Quilting Easy

When designing a quilting pattern, remember that you are the one putting it onto a quilt; you'll want to consider how difficult it will be with the tools and knowledge you have.

  • Every time a line of quilting stops, the thread ends will need to be buried. If this is not something you enjoy doing, pick an edge to edge design. All of the thread ends will land in the binding and won't need to be buried.

  • Changing directions while quilting a large and bulky project on a domestic sewing machine can be challenging. Practice by quilting smaller projects, like table runners or baby quilts, before committing yourself to a king sized project.

  • Begin quilting with some long, edge to edge anchor lines to help hold the layers in place. This also allows you to begin removing basting pins so you'll have few obstacles while quilting more detailed designs.


A Final Reminder

There are no ugly quilting designs. Everyone will have different design preferences and quilting patterns they enjoy using, try a variety of different designs and as you get better at quilting, you'll also learn more about your own personal preferences!


So don't spend too much time overthinking it; use a design that you love, is fun and easy for you to quilt, and soon you'll have a finished quilt that's ready to be loved!



Original Quilting Design for Simply Woven


Here is the first draft of my Simply Woven quilting pattern. I think I originally drafted this in the winter of 2020, over a year ago now.

At the time, the only 'research' I had was my experience quilting Rainbow Railfence, and I should note that it was still in progress at that time. Despite that, I still love the design, and the research I've done has only proven to me that I have the knowledge to pull it off!


My original plan for quilting Simple Woven is pretty straight forward: stitch in the ditch around a few specific parts of the woven piecing to create a sort of broken border effect, then fill the rest of the space with organic, wavy lines. This will create some visual interest on the quilting since the straight, geometric lines and organic, wavy lines will contrast one another. But both of these shapes also reference shapes from the quilt top; the straight lines of the piecing, and the organic shapes found in the prints on the Oakwood fabric.



Adapting the Design


While I really love the original design, I do want to review it now that I have a little more knowledge and experience. Since the wavy quilting will be mostly improv, it won't be getting any major changes, but I do have a few for the geometric, broken border quilting.


First, I've decided to use ⅛" outline quilting rather than stitch in the ditch. The piecing in the quilt top isn't very well aligned in some places (you can see what I mean in the picture below), and if I use stitch in the ditch, I think it will make those piecing problems more obvious. With outline quilting, I can keep my lines of quilting mostly straight, slightly varying the distance from the seam line as necessary.

I'll be making a few changes to the layout of the broken border segments too. I really like the original configuration, but I want at least one vertical and one horizontal border segment to run edge to edge. These will act as anchor points in the quilting, and should help prevent the layers of the quilt from shifting as I begin to add more detail.


I also want to make sure that none of the broken border segments run uninterrupted for more than 24" or the width of two blocks. This is based entirely on personal preference and, as far as I know, doesn't affect the functionality or durability of the quilt in any way.


With all of those changes in mind, here is my final plan:

The pink lines are my edge to edge border segments and will be the first lines I quilt. The orange lines are the remaining border segments and will be quilted next. And the quilting will be finished with the wavy improv lines, shown in blue. The lines in the diagram give an idea of the effect, but on the real quilt they will be quilted more densely.

I plan to quilt everything using this variegated brown thread, it should blend in pretty well with both the backing and quilt top, so if I make a few mistakes, no one will ever see them!



Friends, thank you all for visiting me again this week! With all this planning done, I'm excited to start quilting!


As usual, all the books and blogs I looked at to prepare this post are listed below if you want to check them out for yourself! If you know of any other helpful sources for walking foot quilting, feel free to share those in the comments or with me directly through my contact page, I would love to learn more!


If you want to try this quilting design for yourself on your own version of Simply Woven, or any other quilt for that matter, I would love to see how it turns out! Share photos below, or tag me on Instagram @vafibrearts!


Until Next Time Friends, Happy Quilting!

VA


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