Quilting a Patchwork Mosaic on a Home Machine

Our Patchwork Mosaic Quilt Block is pieced and ready for quilting! I decided to tackle this block first on my Singer treadle with some walking foot quilting, then switched to my regular Eversewn Sparrow sewing machine for some free motion and ruler foot quilting. See how this works in this quilting tutorial:

Click Here for the Patchwork Mosaic block pattern. This block uses 14 scrappy 5-inch squares to create this awesome design. It’s a great way to use up scraps from your stash or a precut square pack.

Click Here to find the piecing tutorial for this quilt block. 

Walking Foot Quilting on a Singer Treadle

Last week I challenged myself to piece this month’s block on my Singer 27 treadle. It was a really fun piecing adventure and I learned a lot about treadling and sewing at the same time. This week I decided to continue the challenge and quilt on this machine too!

The arm of my Singer 27 is actually bigger and feels more open than my modern home machine!

I marked the Super Spiral design using this 1/4-inch thick painters tape (yep, that’s an affiliate link). It was a bit slow to get it stuck in this nice spiral shape, but this was the only way to mark the design and have it show up over all of these busy fabrics.

Unfortunately I don’t think Super Spiral was the best choice of quilting designs to start with. At the beginning of the spiral, it’s important to go slow and stop and pivot the block often. I couldn’t really do this on the treadle smoothly and the beginning of my spiral ended up looking a bit more wiggly wobbly than I liked.

1/4-inch masking tape was the perfect choice for marking the spiral over these busy fabrics.

I do think walking foot quilting works great on the treadle so I plan to try this again, but maybe with a simpler design and just straight lines. Something to plan for next month!

Ruler Foot Quilting Disaster

I had so much fun quilting with my walking foot, I decided to try ruler foot quilting too.  But… that didn’t work!

I found the foot had to be positioned fairly low on the machine in order for the thread to catch. I’m just not used to using the treadle enough to have the hang of treadling and moving the quilt with both hands quite yet.

So I switched to my normal home machine, the Eversewn Sparrow 20 and attached a ruler foot to quilt the flames within the Super Spiral. I changed my stitch length to 0.0 mm and shifted my Queen Supreme Slider so it covers the feed dogs. Click Here to learn more about free motion quilting settings and basics.

I don’t drop my feed dogs. I just change my stitch length to 0.0 mm for free motion / ruler foot quilting.

Click Here to find the Deluxe Foot Set. This set of low shank feet include both the walking foot and ruler foot I used on my Singer Treadle and my Eversewn home machine.

Why a ruler foot?

Ruler foot quilting is a type of free motion quilting. I can quilt in all directions and stitch designs like this Flame Spiral. I can also quilt using the rulers as a guide. So in that way, a ruler foot is more versatile than a regular darning foot and it’s quickly become my favorite foot to use for home machine quilting.

Spirals are much easier to quilt on a home machine if they’re turning in a clockwise direction!

I quilted from the center of the spiral to the outer edges and around the inner block with this simple wiggly flame design. This helped hide a lot of the bad wobbles in my spiral and made the quilt block more interesting.

Ruler Foot Quilting Design

Then when I reached the border, I already had the ruler foot attached so I could go straight into quilting straight lines with the Slice ruler. I first echo ditched around the seamlines of the triangle points. Then quilted again with a line spaced 3/4-inch away.

That’s a tricky spacing so I used a ruler to measure and mark where I needed to change direction in the outer triangle points. I mark medium and dark fabrics like these with this Ceramic Marking Pencil.

Anytime you need to, stop and mark your quilt! It’s not cheating, it’s helping you reduce the chances of making a mistake and having to rip.

After that line of quilting, I could have stopped, but I decided to add one more ring around the block. If you quilt 1/2-inch from the seamline that attached the background strips to the inner block, you’ll basically be quilting the first line of the Victory Lap for this block. So I quilted that line and angled in to echo the corners one more time with another 3/4-inch spaced line.

I also quilted this ruler foot design in a clockwise direction so the least amount of quilt would be in the arm of my machine.

Quilted Patchwork Mosaic Block

So that’s the first design for our Patchwork Mosaic block! That Flame Spiral was certainly an interesting choice on my bright orange background fabric. I really love that straight line border design. Never fear that straight lines are too simple or basic. They are awesome!

I love this funky flame quilting design especially on that orange back!

Have you quilted your Patchwork Mosaic Block yet? I’d love to share it here so everyone can enjoy seeing it! Either post a photo in the comments below or send me a message and I’ll post it for you along with your comment.

Would you like to join in the fun and make this scrappy happy quilt block with me? Click Here to find all of the Friendship Sampler quilt patterns.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Find more Friendship Quilt Along Tutorials

Check out the other tutorials I shared for this Patchwork Mosaic quilt block:

• How to cut scraps for the Friendship Quilt Along
• Piece two at a time half square triangles
• How to Piece Quarter Square Triangles
• Piece Hourglass Squares quilting tutorial
• How to piece a Patchwork Mosaic Quilt Block