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I am sharing with you today how I quilted block 7 – Dove in the Window.

If you are new here, this post is a part of my quilt-as-you-go my Sewcial Bee Sampler, a sew-along hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell. I plan to share along the process with some tips and tutorial.

As usual, I have two blocks made for two quilts, one with custom quilting and one with allover quilting. Both would be a great practice if you are looking towards improving your free-motion skill. I am still practicing myself, especially with the custom quilting. I am learning as I go, so let’s do this together!

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Quilt as you go

Quilt as you go block-by-block, is one method you could opt for when you want to make quilting large quilts on your domestic machine feasible. It is one of my go-to methods especially if I want to skip the heavy work pushing through large quilts within my machine throat space.

Besides, I love the fact that I can easily finish blocks by blocks and even have a fancy backing like this one I made earlier. If you are interested to learn how I piece the block together, here is one way how to do it – using small sashing strips.

Allover Quilting Motif: Spirals

For the allover quilting, I chose to do the spirals. Spiral is possibly one of the basic motifs that I like to go for when choosing a design to quilt.

Spiral quilting gives a lot of movement to the quilt and I think that is one of the reason it is one of my favourite motifs.

Spirals can easily be mixed together with other motifs and design to create more textures and movement. I love mixing it together with pebbles and wavy lines. However, to keep this block in uniform with the other blocks, I stick to a single motif for the block with an allover spiral design.

Here is the basic how to make spiral allover quilting.

How to free motion quilt spirals

You will need:

Pen and Paper
Free motion quilting foot. Read here for more detail info which foot is best.
A good thread. I use Superior Threads for all of my quilting
The right needle. I suggest using top stitch needle as it has a larger eye to avoid wearing off your thread.

I do suggest you try this pattern with pen and paper first. This will give you the idea on how the final look will be, how you are to navigate from one place to another, and how the motion is.

After having the confidence practicing on paper, you can move onto free motion quilting on scrap fabric basted with leftover batting. This is to ensure you have good tension and have a good sense of moving your quilt in the direction you want it to go. Then you can move onto quilting your block.

Here is the finished block with the spiral quilting.

make sure you pin this to try them later!

Custom free motion quilting on quilt as you go blocks

For the other quilt, each block is going to be custom quilted, which means each will be designed accordingly with the block pattern.

The benefit of using quilt-as-you-go block is that it is so much easy to maneuver with small blocks and custom quilting is made easier under the throat of a domestic machine. Plus, your shoulder should thank you too!

I planned the custom quilting using Sharon Holland’s colouring page which Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell have available for download in the Intro section. I simply view them in magnified mode on my screen and crop each block into JPG on its own (You can use (shift+command+4 on Mac) or use snips in Microsoft.

Then, I printed the block individually and plan out the quilting with pencils. While doing it with the pencil I also plan how will I be moving the needle from one place to another.

Marking on the block for free motion quilting for quilt as you go blocks

You will need:

Hera marker
Water erasable pen
Quarter inch ruler

On the quilt block, make sure custom quilting are made within the finished block size – which means, you have to mark a 1/4″ frame line from the block seams. This is to ensure that when joining the blocks together, the quilting does not get covered by the seams.

You can mark using a Hera marker or an erasable .

For this block, I decided to try out dot-to-dot quilting technique and skip marking anything on the block itself. I made an orange peel centre using this very technique I learned from Angela’s Class.

As for the flying geese, I decided to leave them popping up by dense quilting the background with matchstick quilting.

Since there is no border in this block, I decided to put the feather element in the four corners to sync with all the previous blocks.

Well, if you decide to join along or have any questions, drop me a comment. I will be happy to help where I can! In the meantime, you can also check these free motion quilting tips!