Medallion Machine Quilting

I have a confession. I've never done free-motion embroidery before on my Pfaff 7570.And now I'm going to learn it on my Medallion Quilt. Hmmm....should be interesting.

First I had to get the big instruction book out and actually read it. My Pfaff 7570 has a built-in even-feed system, an absolute must for machine quilting (most machines don't and you have to purchaser an extra attachment). Then I attached the free-motion embroidery foot (foot #6), lowered the feed dogs and put the foot into the darning position (I call it half mast since it's between all the way up and down). I tightened the tension a little to make sure I had good stitches on the quilt back.

Using free motion embroidery makes it a whole lot easier to quilt the figures in the center Toile medallion rather than constantly twisting and turning the quilt around to get where I need to go.  The Fons and Porter quilting grip gloves really help! This machine quilting is a new experience for me and I always enjoy a challenge! I worked on and off for four days quilting figures, trees, wheat and hills and valleys, horizons. A veritable set of five scenes in all. Oh, and the verse for Bonny Bonny Charlie, too, the theme of this vintage 1959 Williamsburg Toile.

The center round border was done with an open toe foot and regular machine settings, as was the large square border. The photo below shows the open toe foot foot but I found it wasn't a good choice for stitching in the ditch between the antique linen and red floral.

So I changed to a better foot: the narrow edge stitch foot which has a 'blade' (does not cut anything) that acts as a guide between two pieces of fabric or on a seam. Perfect for this technique!

The rest of the quilting is mostly stitching-in-the-ditch on the seam lines using this foot and regular machine settings. Every "seam" is started and ended with 8-10 tiny stitches (0.5mm length) then 2.5mm for the quilting.

How do you manage a large quilt when machine quilting?  You roll it up to expose the area to work on. 

I re-roll the quilt to expose the area to be worked on as I go. The quilting is worked in a specific order to keep the quilt from getting off-kilter, or stretched. See the photo below and the drawing on the left with the arrows that's the order, or direction, for quilting this, finishing top and bottom, then each side. 

When all of the stitching in the ditch is completed then I will tackle the two borders with quilted designs using the "Borders Made Easy" that I purchased. That's another challenge!!

That Medallion Quilt: Design as I Go

I finally decided to get back to that Medallion Quilt I started a year ago. I was at an impasse as to how to proceed... procrastination! In my mind I knew I wanted to take it with me to the recent sewing retreat I attended, along with The Beast...The Singer 99K (heavens, it must weigh at least 35 pounds). I figured the machine would help me get in the mood to work on the quilt. After researching more medallion quilt designs online I knew the best way to proceed was one border at a time, sort of a design-as-you-go method. And I wondered why do I always pick out difficult projects to do? Why couldn't I just choose one of those quilts that supplies all the fabric, gives detailed instructions and you just follow along.....

 

I first decided I wanted to make a row/border of half triangle squares...I thought they would bring in all of the fabrics and not use too much since I really didn't know how much I needed in the first place to make this queen size quilt. I carefully cut strips, then squares, then cut those into triangles and sewed them together. Lots of them.... Then I stitched those into strips....but Oops, I didn't like the way they looked against the bordered medallion.

Back to square one. So I started taking fabrics and laying them up against the medallion, and eureka! A 4" wide border of the dark red floral really looked good. And it was simple...yeah!

Then on to another border after getting home. After carefully measuring (the medallion is not perfectly square...another challenge) I realized I could make four-block squares starting with 2 1/4" strips of fabric. After stitching two different strips together I cut them into 2-block strips, and then sewed those together to make the blocks. Then the blocks together into a long strip for each side....you quilters know the drill. I stitched this fairly randomly. Here's a corner of the quilt top.

The Medallion Quit so far: I like it.

I'm going to hang this over the banister so I can see it regularly and ponder the next border. I have some ideas about what should be next: a solid border of cream muslin? What do you think?