THE LAST WORD

In need of fresh quilting inspo? Amanda Carye has five tips to switch up your stitching game…

If you’re in need of fresh quilting inspo, Amanda Carye has five tips to switch up your stitching game…

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’ll know that I’m not the world’s most adventurous machine quilter. When push comes to shove, I’ll probably go for my ‘tried and true’ cross hatched grid pattern. But, I’ll admit, there’s a fine line between ‘tried and true’ and ‘in a rut’. If you, like me, find yourself, more often than not, using those same quilting patterns again, again (and again!), here are five ideas to help you get out of that rut!

1 HOW ABOUT STENCILS?

I’m a huge fan of stencils! These lightweight, reusable and inexpensive plastic sheets come in all sorts of different sizes. The funny thing is, I use them more as a visualisation tool than as actual stencils: when I’m feeling stuck, I like to pull them all out and ‘audition’ the different patterns by laying them on top of my current project and taking a step back to get a sense of what a repeating pattern will look like. It’s such a good way to see what the finished result could be!

2 NOT READY TO TRY FREE MOTION WAVES?

How about putting your machine zigzag stitch to work? I’ve been dying to try this out, ever since I saw the tutorial by Jodie aka ‘The Impatient Quilter’ of @jozmakesquilts (and owner of the Scribbly Gum Quilt Co). She uses this angular stitch all the time on her quilts and it always looks awesome!

3 GO SLEEK WITH SATIN STITCH

Whether it’s by hand or using the pre-loaded machine stitches on my sewing machine – I love, love, LOVE the texture of the satin stitch, especially for a polka dot quilted effect! And the best part, even if your machine doesn’t have a pre-loaded stitch, you can fudge it by using a short, wide zigzag stitch.

4 REVISIT THE CLASSICS

If you’re not up for stitching in the ditch (which is HARD), a ¼in outline is another great challenge (one that doesn’t showcase your mistakes quite as enthusiastically as stitching in the ditch!). I especially love to quilt with a ¼in outline when I’m working on a project that has only two fabrics, particularly one with a print background fabric and a solid accent fabric. I find the ¼in quilting outline acts as an exclamation point to the accent fabric!

5 ALL TIED UP

I can’t put into words how much I love hand-tied quilts. [Check out Karen Lewis’ on p76!]. It brings so much tangible texture as well as feeling playful and fun. It’s also a great way to get around having to struggle with bulky seams, so give it some serious consideration on your next too-many-tiny-pieces project.