4 Best Free Motion Quilting Tools – Make Quilting Easy!

Today I’m sharing my thoughts on the four best free motion quilting tools. I use these tools every time I quilt on my home sewing machine, and with every quilt I create. These are the essential tools that I honestly can’t quilt without.

I’ll also share a few new tools as it’s now 2023 and in more than 12 years, a few of my favorite tools are no longer produced. Thankfully the quilting industry is full of enterprising entrepreneurs and we have lots of creative and effective tools to help make quilting easier!

Jump ahead to find the tool you’d like to learn about first:

Best Free Motion Quilting Tools

Just to make it extra convenient for you, here’s the top three quilting tools I recommend and use daily for free motion quilting:

Get a Grip on Your Quilt – Best Quilting Gloves

I think my absolute favorite quilting tool, dating back to my very first quilting class are my Machingers Quilting Gloves. These gloves in particular are lightweight nylon with rubber tips that gently grip your quilt.

If you’ve seen even one of the hundreds of quilting videos on this project, you will have noticed that every single one was stitched out wearing gloves. I occasionally receive questions about this like, “Is something wrong with your hands? Why are you wearing gloves?!”

Trust me, it’s not because I have a strange skin fungus. It’s because the gloves really work to help me grip the quilt and move it around precisely. The easier you can move the quilt, the more control you have of it, the better your stitches will look.

In the photo above, I’m quilting the Checkerboard Tiles block from the Friendship Quilt Along, which featured super sized quilt blocks we finished quilt-as-you-go style. I find wearing quilting gloves help me better control my quilt with all forms of machine quilting: walking foot quilting, ruler quilting, and free motion quilting.

I also find that wearing the gloves drastically reduces the amount of strain my hands and shoulders take when quilting bigger quilts. Without them, I would find myself gripping my hands into a fist around the quilt to move it around, which starts hurting pretty quickly.

With the gloves on, I can keep my hands flat while moving the quilt and be able to keep quilting much longer because I’ve reduced the strain on my body.

Make the Quilt Easier to Move – Free Motion Glider

The original slippery tool I used isn’t no longer manufactured, but now we have a new and better quilting tool – the Free Motion Glider! This is a Teflon sheet that goes over your machine bed and reduces the friction between your quilt and the surface of your machine and table. It makes your quilt easier to move around and create beautiful designs with less strain on your body.

One side of the Free Motion Glider is grippy and will stick to your machine bed without being an actual sticker. You can peel it off and move it all you won’t and it doesn’t leave any sticky residue. The slick side of the glider is positioned face up, and you’ll want to line up the hole in the center with the hole in your machine.

There are actually three ways I like to position my Free Motion Glider on my home sewing machine for quilt piecing and different types of machine quilting. Sometimes you need the feed dogs exposed and sometimes you don’t. Here’s a quick video on how I use this quilting tool:

The Free Motion Glider is an awesome tool, but it is delicate. If you’re not used to using it, it’s easy to accidentally stitch through it (which is awful), so I do advise taping down the corners with masking tape the first couple times you use it until you get used to the feel of it under your quilt.

Quilting Thread that Doesn’t Drive You Crazy – Isacord Thread

The third best free motion quilting tool is my favorite thread – Isacord polyester embroidery thread. This thread is perfect for machine quilting because it’s:

• Thin – This is a 40 weight thread that looks great when quilted on a large or small scale. You can travel stitch over your lines of quilting without the design looking like a child’s crayon drawing.
• Strong – When I first began free motion quilting, I couldn’t travel stitch at all because every time my line of quilting overlapped, my thread would break. It was caused by using thread that was too thick and too weak for the job. Isacord can travel, over and over and over, and stands up beautifully to the test of time!
• Affordable – I like thread I can buy multiple spools without breaking the bank. I also like getting enough thread on the spool to be able to quilt a big chunk of my quilt. Isacord comes in 1000 meter spools, which I consider the perfect size.

I’ve written a lot more about Isacord Thread and about picking your quilting needles because these are such important tools for enjoying free motion quilting. Enjoying means being able to quilt more than an hour without breaking thread three times – and yes, your needle and thread choice has a lot to do with that! Just in case you’re wondering about using polyester threads on a cotton quilt fabric, Click Here to read more.

Keep Your Bobbin Spinning Smoothly – Bobbin Washers

When I originally wrote this post in 2011, I used Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers in every machine all the time. These little Teflon discs go in your bobbin case and fill up the extra space between your bobbin and bobbin case. This helps your bobbin thread feed as smoothly as your top thread.

Over the past few years, home sewing machines have changed a lot. Most come with bobbin case springs serve the same purpose as bobbin washers. I also found my new Eversewn Sewing Machines didn’t need bobbin washers – they didn’t stitch any better with them in.

So this is a tool that is extra helpful for sewing machines made before 2015 or so. If you have a metal bobbin case and it doesn’t have a spring, maybe pop in a bobbin washer and see if your thread feeds a bit better.

For my longarm quilting machines (my, things have changed!) I will use Mega Genie Magic Bobbin Washers, but only if the built-in spring in the bobbin case falls out. Getting the spring back in the bobbin case is almost impossible, so I only use these if the spring falls out.

More Helpful Machine Quilting Tools

Here’s a few more machine quilting tools, plus a kit of my three favorites – Machingers Quilting Gloves, Free Motion Glider, and Isacord Thread:

Quilt Dragging You Down? Try a Quilt Suspension System

I have one more bonus machine quilting tool that can be really helpful when quilting on a home machine or sit down longarm in a quilting table. The main issue with this style of quilting is the weight of the quilt dragging against you, making it difficult to make large movements with your hands.

To solve this issue, hang up your quilt! I originally began suspending my quilts from the ceiling using a DIY quilt suspension system that worked great. But most quilters didn’t really like the idea of attaching hooks or bars to their ceiling nearly as much as I did!

Thankfully more industrious companies have picked up this idea and we now have a clamping Quilt Suspension System which attaches to your sewing table or extension table and gives you the same effect – a lifted quilt and less drag.

This quilt suspension system can work for our newer forms of quilting too – quilting with your embroidery machine, ruler quilting, etc. It’s so exciting to be updating these older posts and realize just how much the craft of quilting has changed in 12 years!

The Best Quilting Tools Are the Ones That Work For You

While I can’t say my choices for the best free motion quilting tools will work for everyone (some people hate to wear gloves for example), these are the ones I like the most. Please try a variety of tools and materials to see what works for you and don’t give up. Free motion quilting is hard to master because it’s such a different quilting skill.

As James likes to say “Try it, you’ll like it, it’s GOOD!“

Let’s Go Quilt,

Leah Day