Echo Quilting Practice on a Longarm Machine

This week I’m practicing echo quilting as I quilt River Path through another square on this small quilt. See how I played around with changing my grip on the longarm once again to see if that made a difference:

Click here to find more Frame Quilting Friday videos. I’ve been sharing new videos on my Grace Qnique Longarm for several months now and I love to hear your suggestions for new videos and tutorials. Make sure to share your ideas in the comments below.

Click here to learn more about the Grace Qnique and Continuum quilting frame I’m using in this video.

Practicing Echoing on a Longarm

Echo quilting is the technique of stitching a set distance away from another line of quilting. I love this technique for adding simple texture to any block and expanding a design over a quilt. The trick is maintaining the echoes so the space between the lines stays the same. My goal is to be able to maintain a set distance consistently throughout a block.

I chose Stippling as my base design for this echoing practice. First I quilted the design throughout the small square, then quilted back through the block echoing the first line of quilting about 1/4 inch away.

I started by practicing Stippling, then began echoing row after row.

Why am I quilting on such a small scale?

I know small scale quilting might not seem like a lot of fun on a longarm, but repetition is key to learning anything. You’ll get many more repeats of an echo quilting design on a small scale than you will if you quilt on a big scale.

I think it’s great to learn free motion quilting on a home machine on a tiny scale. You gain so much skill for so much less money and fabric and materials that you use. Just in case you’re needing a challenge, here’s a book with a year worth of designs to stitch out!

I quilted through the block and filled in echoing on one side of the original stippling line. That line is called a foundation. If you really want to get fancy you could change the thread colors to fill in the opposite side of the design.

Get a Different Grip

I played around with holding the back part of the machine to see if that would help me gain more control over the machine’s movement. Ultimately, I’m not sure again whether it was holding the machine this way or simply getting more practice echo quilting that helped.

I’m not sure if this grip helped or just more practice was the key!

I’m feeling rather sick of this quilt so I think I’m going to take it off the frame this week and switch to something soft and fuzzy. Yes, minky has my name on it and I can’t wait to try quilting something funky over some minky scraps I have on hand.

Don’t forget to check out the videos I posted last month on the Friendship Quilt Along. I’m also using my longarm on this video series as well.

Click Here to learn how to baste a quilt block on a longarm.

How to quilt a Scrappy Star block with Stippling

I’m quilting one block on my home machine then another block on my longarm so I can teach you how to quilt a variety of designs and cover lots of techniques all in one go.

This quilting is super simple and soft – perfect for a bed quilt!

Click here to check out the Friendship Quilt Along and learn more.

Click here to find more Frame Quilting Friday videos. Don’t forget to suggest new videos or tutorials that you would like to see in the comments below!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day