Before heading off on my trip, I carefully rolled up my applique landscape quilt and tucked it safely into my suitcase, ready for travel. Alongside it, I packed a selection of threads I thought I might need for stitching on the go.
Now that I’m ready to pull it back out and continue working, I’ve realised I need to spend a little time thinking about exactly how I want to quilt it. More importantly, I want to warm up my free-motion quilting skills before stitching onto the actual project.
Unfortunately, when I unpacked everything, I discovered I’d forgotten to bring a pale variegated blue thread - exactly the one I wanted to use for quilting the sky. I could begin working in another area, but I really prefer starting with the background first, much like building layers in applique, but I can certainly experiment with ideas and practice some designs.
Before I start, I can't stress enough how important it is to warm up my free-motion quilting skills and my old Bernina (she hasn't been used in a while). This helps me decide if I have the fabrics layered correctly and confirms the thread tension and machine settings are behaving as they should.... and to ensure the machine is running well.
This short video (I recorded a while ago) shows me warming-up my skills and testing my stitches:
After warming up, I started sketching and stitching a few ideas for the tree trunks. I wanted something with texture and movement that would add depth without overwhelming the applique.
For the sky background, I’m thinking of using gently flowing horizontal lines - perhaps loosely stitched and broken up in places to suggest soft, fluffy cloud formations.
For the larger green sections within the trees, I experimented with a small continuous leaf design. I wanted something organic that could flow naturally across the quilt without constant stopping and starting.
I still need to practice these designs using the actual threads I intend to use on the quilt itself, but at least I now have a few starting points to build from. One of the things I love most about quilting is how creative ideas evolve as you work - often one stitched motif inspires the next.
While searching for my warm-up video, I also rediscovered this short preview demonstrating some of the quilting techniques featured in my workshop, so I thought I’d share that too.
If you’d like to learn more about free-motion quilting and explore a variety of quilting designs and techniques, you can find all the details about my online quilting class here: Machine Quilting Online Workshop
