Machine quilting with
DecoBob
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thread
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I’m going to head to my sewing room to do some machine
quilting with DecoBob thread on my next UFO – my painted
peony.
Squaring up the peony using two rulers
Squaring up the fabric
The first job is to square up the fabric the peony is painted on.
When squaring up fabric and quilts, I like to use two rulers. My
large 16" square and my 6" x 25" long ruler. By butting them up
together, you can cut a multiple of sizes making sure that the
corners are a 90º angle.
Adding the borders
The stitching that I’m going to do on the peony is much less
dense than what I did on my tulip, and I want to have it serve
as quilting stitches too, so I’m going to add the borders and
layer the quilt before stitching. I want the emphasis to be on
the flower, so I’m going to use pink tone on tone fabrics for the
inner and outer borders. The inner border is cut 1½" to finish at
1" and the outer border is cut at 4" to finish at 3½". Since Lucy
mentioned how well DecoBob works for precision piecing, I’ve
decided to try using it in the top and bobbin to sew on my
borders.
Layering the quilt
Once all of the borders have been added, it’s time to layer the
quilt with the batting and backing. I talked about this process
in my QUILTsocial posts back in June. Whenever I am basting a
small project like this, I always use 505™ adhesive spray.
Using DecoBob to sew on the borders
Picking the threads
I have some Tutti and Fruitti threads that match my peony
beautifully, so I’m going to use them to do the machine stitching and embellishing on the flower petals and leaves. I’ll use the
DecoBob in the bobbin to make sure there isn’t a lot of thread
build up on the back of the quilt.
Embellishing the peony with machine quilting
To do the stitching, I put on my free motion quilting foot and
dropped my feed dogs. On the first stitch, I bring up the bobbin
thread from the back and do a few stitches in place to lock the
threads in place. Then, I follow the contours of the petals and
stitch the veins with the medium-colored threads first. Next,
I re-thread the machine with the darkest thread and then the
lightest thread. Finally, I change to the green threads and stitch
the leaves and stems. I really love the effect that the green variegated thread has on the stems.
One thing to watch when changing thread colors often is to
make sure that you always have your machine foot up to make
sure the thread passes between the tension discs. This ensures
your upper thread tension is consistant.
Quilt basted with 505 spray
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QUILTsocial
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spring 2015