Sometimes you just have to make your own mistakes and make your own experiments before you believe a result that someone else has already warned you about.
I have been neglecting the FMQ on my giveaway quilt, probably since I haven’t FMQ’d since June. (That’s Free Motion Quilting, for the uninformed)
That and I really just want to piece my (other) quilts in my own room, around my own things, which leads me to procrastinate on this current project.
This quilt was supposed to be a quick quilt to get me to practice the FMQ, and that is starting to serve it’s purpose this early morning.
My experiment & hypothesis: I can FMQ through a freezer paper quilting template and still like the quilting results on the quilt when the freezer paper is removed.
First I took a paper copy of my design (Just ran the freezer paper copy through my printer) and pinned it down to the top of a practice quilt sandwich.
I quilted through that. First, I locked up & realized how much lint is gathering under my metal plate, so spent a half hour ‘delinting’ my machine.
After all is lint free, I try again with the regular paper. I suppose this was my ‘control’ of my experiment. To see if freezer paper would be easier than the regular paper.
Regular paper quilts through mostly fine, although at this point, I haven’t removed the regular paper yet, so this data is only halfway done.
Then decided I needed more time getting the rhythm for the design down, so I cut a smaller sandwich for the middle design & quilted it down.
So I took freezer paper and put it on my practice quilt sandwich and FMQ’d away.
I have only removed the paper from one of the flowers and leaves at this point, and although this technique I think would work, I am having reservations at how much this is pulling up the stitches.
One solution: faster foot pedal, slower hands.
This produces smaller stitches that would make it easier to tear away the paper and would prevent large loops coming undone
Another solution: tighten the tension on the top (?)
I am not sure but maybe a tighter tension would produce tighter stitches on the top.
Another solution: get the freezer paper wet with water to help remove the paper.
enough said.
Another solution: get a light weight quilting paper specially designed to dissolve away.
This would help with keeping the stitches close to the actual fabric underneath, perhaps also providing more tension all on it’s own. I don’t own any of this.
Another solution: trace the design from paper to the fabric using dressmaker’s carbon.
This way I don’t have to deal with the paper itself. Of course I don’t OWN any dressmaker’s carbon.
Another solution: trace the design onto tissue paper.
Same as the carbon, and I may actually have some. somewhere. Somewhere.Tissue paper’s thin. May come with its own set of problems too though.
Another option: leave it – it’s working out ok enough.
I think this may work overall, if I decided to leave the freezer paper & tear it out by hand, I think this could be “good enough” and know that over time, I’ll get better. And hopefully the recipient would understand.
I realized that I never have come to this place before in my stages of quilting.
Which solution / option do you usually chose? Reasons why?
