Quilting Pebbling for Travel Stitching Practice
This week I’m practicing travel stitching on my longarm with the perfect design: pebbling! See how I’m changing up my grip to determine if that helps me gain more control over the design and my travel stitching:
I’m quilting on my Grace Qnique Longarm on the Continuum quilting frame. I love this machine because it’s small and has just the right number of features I need to quilt my own quilts.
I love the Continuum frame because it can grow with me and if I ever decide to get a bigger longarm machine this frame can expand to hold a bigger machine.
I’m also quilting with the open toe foot from the three piece Hopping Foot Set.
Practicing Travel Stitching
One of the most important techniques to master with free motion quilting is travel stitching. This is the process of stitching right on top of another line of stitching.
My pebbling wasn’t perfect, but seemed to get better the more I quilted!
I admit I really struggled with travel stitching on my longarm. I’m great at quilting like this on my home machine because I have more control over the quilt’s movement.
Quilting really precisely just requires different muscles to move the machine that I still haven’t built yet. I decided to try gripping the front area of the machine to see if that would improve my control over where it was going.
This was helpful, but I’m not sure if it was the practice I was getting quilting pebbling or my hand on the front of the machine that had the most benefit.
Ultimately the key to mastering any technique is lots of practice! I need to fill a lot more of these squares before travel stitching will feel as easy on my longarm.
Click Here to find more Frame Quilting Friday videos.
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
P.S. Here’s the last Frame Quilting Friday tutorial just in case you’d like to watch it too!
The Hopping Foot Set includes a Ruler Foot, Microstippling Foot, and Open Toe Foot
It’s a shame we can’t coment on your videos anymore. To me you are a real honest person. You always are of big help. I just saw your episode on long arm machine, the new one. I am an experienced piercer and made an investment on a quilt designer 2 11 years ago, did I make a mistake. It’s very expensive to get serviced and the company has been sold to Singer . I almost made the mistake of even thinking of buying a long arm when they were very expensive. It’s good to have honest people like you. I have come to the conclusion that if you do not know how to quilt on a regular machine well, don’t even dream that a long arm or any fancy machine is going to do it for you. Thank you so much for all the great videos. May God bless you and your family always.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to Carmen. Of course you can comment on my videos. I appreciate your insight on your machine. It’s easy to jump in when things are shiny and new, but sometimes waiting a bit for the prices to drop is a good idea!