Josh is Quilting on the Grace Qnique 14+
Last week I tried quilting with fleece fabric on the back of my quilt and I received a lot of questions about working with this fabric. I decided to try it again, this time without stabilizing with French Fuse and with a wool batting to see what would happen.
And because I had a really sore throat, I asked Josh to jump on the machine and see what it was like from a beginner perspective. So here’s Josh quilting a super simple design called Teeth:
Josh quilted with me through 42 videos in the Building Blocks Quilt Along, but really hasn’t done much quilting since. This was the first time he’s ever quilted on this machine and I think he did great!
Yes, there is a lot of speed in the Grace Qnique 14+ and I trolled Josh a bit at the end by telling him to press the foot pedal harder. As you can see, his quilting looked pretty good for the first two rows, but when he sped up, his Teeth got really sloppy because he wasn’t ready to handle the high speed, plus moving the quilt, plus forming the Teeth design:
On quilting with fleece without stabilizer, yes, you can skip that step. My default is to stabilize anything weird, but in this case I think you can quilt without the stabilizer and be okay.
It does make the quilt more challenging to baste, but you could get around this by basting on a longarm (on a frame) with water soluble thread and avoid having to tape the quilt to a table, or spray baste outside.
I’ve really enjoyed playing with this fabric and next week I plan to quilt with Minky fabric! This is even softer, squishier fabric that will be delightful on the back of a quilt.
I can already tell you what is not delightful about Minky fabric – cutting it! More on that next week…
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
Leah, I so enjoy your posts. I use painters tape to cut Minke. I place the tape so the cuts go right through the middle of the strip. It keeps the fuzz down.
That's exactly what we did! It worked like a treat!
I was just thinking of using Minke as a quilt back for my granddaughter but then thought, nah, too messy. Great idea, thank you!!! Also, Josh did a pretty darn good job on this. I couldn't do any better at that speed!
Some Minke is more fuzzy…the tape idea sounds great!
Great job Josh! What a good sport and amazing that the results were so good first try!
I have used a cuddle fleece but only used it for stitch in the ditch. I am so looking forward to getting a quilt pieced that I can try with fmq. I love that painter's tape idea for all the fluff. However a good shake outside has been okay as well!