My newest quilt pattern, Sweet Serenade, is now available! I just love how this cover version turned out and I think the quilting fits it so well.
There are kits available for this version from Fieldstone Fabric so you can enjoy making and displaying the beauty of Sweet Serenade in your own home!
Today, I want to give you a step-by-step tutorial on how I quilted my cover quilt. This is a great design that can be made on your domestic machine with a walking foot. It looks amazing with Sweet Serenade, but it can also be easily adjusted to work with any square block-based quilt!
This quilt pattern lends itself to this quilting design because of the shape of the "petals". My goal was to have the quilting accentuate the pattern, so I used the shapes in the design to guide the quilting design.
I did all of the petal quilting across the width of the quilt horizontally. This quilt doesn't have an obvious "top" or "bottom", but I'm going to refer to the first half as the "top" and the second half as the "bottom" for the sake of simplicity.
I used a 3.5 mm stitch length with my needle in the center position.
Let's get started!
To begin, roll up the top half of the quilt so it fits through your machine throat space. You will start quilting across the center width of the quilt and after each quilting row, you'll move to the right, working your way out towards the top edge.
Start at a non-snowballed corner of a block and slowly sew an arc to the opposite corner of that same block, using the football/petal shape of the piece as a guide. To sew an arc, maneuver the quilt as it feeds through the machine, slowly turning it as you go. The machine is stitching straight, so it's your job to turn the quilt to get that smooth arc.
I made my arc wide enough so that the edge of my presser foot came close to, but didn't touch, the snowballed corner piece. Stop with your needle down at the corner intersection. Raise the presser foot, keeping the needle down so as not to shift the fabric, and turn the quilt to get it in position for another arc. Lower the presser foot and sew another arc in the same way as the first and stop in the next intersection.
Continue to quilt arcs in this manner across the width of the quilt. Once you've done that first row, repeat the same pattern for each row until you have quilted those arcs across the width for the whole top half of the quilt.
Then, flip the quilt 180° and roll up the unquilted side. Starting again in the center, quilt the same arcs on the bottom half of the quilt. Note that the "petals" on this half are mirror images of the first half. Your arcs will be quilted in the exact same way, but the very center row will intersect with the center on the first half, eventually creating an X shape of petals.
Next, you're going to go over the whole quilt again in much the same fashion. Roll up one half of the quilt, begin in the center, and stitch arcs across the width horizontally. On this second pass through, however, you're going to sew the arcs opposite of the way you did the first time, creating a football shape within each block.
Once you have those initial shapes quilted, you can go back and create additional football shapes inside of the original ones. I did three sets of football shapes within each block on mine. You could do more or fewer, based on your preference.
Use your presser foot to guide you as you make the new arcs. Start in the corner, arc, then meet in the opposite corner. I aimed to have the edge of my presser foot next to my previous stitch line by the time I reached the center of each arc, and slowly brought it closer to the previous stitch line until it met up in the corner.
Keep repeating these arcs until you are satisfied with the density of the quilting/the number of football shapes within each block.
Notice below how the petals create X's across the center width.
OPTIONAL: Once all your petals are quilted, you can also quilt very narrow football shapes across the quilt vertically in between each row of blocks. To do this, start at the center top of the quilt right on the seam line and make a narrow arc, intersecting back at the block seam intersection. This is also the intersection for your previous quilting. Continue to quilt narrow arcs across the length of the quilt. This will give you half a football shape on each block. Then, repeat this process, making your arcs opposite of the first ones to achieve the football shapes.
It's helpful to stitch an elongated S shape where you arc on the right side of one block, pass through the intersection and then arc on the left side of the next block, etc.
TIPS:
- Stitch slowly! Take your time with this! Put on some good music or an audiobook and just enjoy the slow and steady process. It's a good idea to slow down as you near each block intersection, even stitching one stitch at a time, in order to land right in the intersection.
- Use quilting gloves! Quilting gloves have textured grips on the fingers that allow you to maneuver the quilt more easily.
- Don't stress over perfection! This is a very organic style of quilting. Your arcs and shapes won't all be exactly the same size, your lines may not all intersect exactly in the same spot, and that's okay! The quilting doesn't have to be perfect and exact to be beautiful. Any little inconsistencies will be virtually invisible once the whole thing is finished.
- For more tips on quilting on your domestic machine, check out this guest blog post I wrote for Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter!
Get the Sweet Serenade pattern here! Be sure to tag me on Instagram @a_stitch_is_a_stitch so I can celebrate you and your lovely quilt!
Fabrics used in the cover quilt are Art Gallery Fabrics in Coconut Milk, Vanilla Custard, Cinnamon, Blushing and English Toffee.