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Frequently
Asked Questions about Leah Day and
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Of course, there are always new designs and new design types being formed. I look at everything and anything for inspiration! From Better Homes and Gardens magazine to Marvel Comics, from carpet to wallpaper patterns, and every book on signs, symbols, art and architecture.
Occasionally I'll be out around town and have to stop and shoot pictures or draw a design quickly. In the middle of the night I will turn on the light to jot down a design that's just popped into my head. My husband and son have both learned to humor these oddities since the start of the project!
Why did you start the project?
I
started the project for several reasons. First off, I was sick of
stippling! I realized while quilting
Release Your Light
that there HAD to be more free motion quilting designs.
I started searching for a site that would have many designs listed with photos, much like the Quilter's Cache - a website that has almost every single pieced block pattern available for free with downloadable patterns and photos!
But after many days of searching, I realized that such a site didn't exist yet for free motion quilting and if I really wanted more free motion quilting inspiration, I'd just have to create it myself.
I also started this project to push myself. I knew that I could easily set the goal for designs lower, maybe 50 or 100 designs, not 365.
But having a goal for 365 designs really pushed me to pursue every avenue of design and to leave no stone unturned when it came to thinking about free motion quilting. If I'd set the goal lower, I don't think I would have followed every "what if?" design question because I simply didn't have to.
I
also started the project totally open minded about free motion quilting.
I knew 5 designs really well: Stippling,
Paisley, Pebbling,
McTavishing, and one design I'd
created for Release Your Light
called Flame
Stitch.
I had no idea what made some of these designs work really easily in all areas of a quilt and why some were a real pain to stitch in small areas.
But over time
I began to see how some designs worked better than others. I began
to form my Filler
Design Theory about how free motion quilting designs and how
the way a particular design is stitched really can effect the way
it works on a quilt.
Lately I've been feeling like the project is taking on a whole new
scale: originally intended to come up with new quilting designs, it
has slowly turned into an artistic study into how texture can effect
the overall design and dimension of a quilt.
I feel so extremely lucky and fortunate to be able to come up with these designs so easily and to share them with so many quilters all over the world!
I'm a huge fan of freeware - or open source software. Not too long ago, women would gather together in bees to learn how to piece or appliqué different types of blocks together with the free help of friends. They would gather again to hand quilt their finished quilt tops together because as a group they could finish a large quilt in very little time, whereas alone, finishing a handquilted top could take years.
Quilting has always been a free hobby - free information and inspiration shared between friends and neighbors. I consider you all my friends and I freely share my designs and inspiration with you!
I only hope you will pass on the love by sharing word of this project with your quilting friends and neighbors so everyone will know it's here.
Are you a formally trained artist / Do you have an art degree?
No. Absolutely not.
I did attend the University of North Carolina at Asheville for 2 years, but my projected major was Biology, not art!
After 2 years and $5,000 of student loans I decided I'd had enough. I was never going to be a biologist or a doctor as my parents had hoped. I dropped out of college in 2004 and I've never regretted that decision or felt the need to finish my degree.
Too many people believe that you have to be a formally trained artist or have an art degree in order to be creative or make money as a professional artist. However, my personal opinion is that classroom time closes the doors on creativity, and that some of the most creative, artistic minds have been ruined by their formal education.
The fact is, you don't have to have a piece of paper proving you're an artist any more than you need a piece of paper proving your human. Creativity ebbs and flows. It cannot and should not be forced.
My personal opinion is that many aspiring artists should major in business rather than art. At least then you'd have a good idea of how to create a profitable business with your creativity.
How do you manage to do it all?
I get this question a whole lot and it makes me sad actually. I think it's sad because for all of our advances as women and the advances in quilting as an art form, not just a craft, we still very rarely see women crafting as more than a hobby.
The free motion quilting blog project, the Day Style Designs Online Quilt Shop, and my skin care website are, in essence, my job. Just like any mom that puts in a 40 hour work week, I still manage to have time for myself, my child, and my husband.
That being said, there are a few things that I don't do because I either don't have time or that my time is better spent not doing them. I have my house cleaned every 2 weeks and my husband takes care of all the grocery shopping and cooking. I don't fold clothes, wash dishes, sweep, mop, or scrub anything other than my kid on occasion!
While my house may not be spic and span, I find that a little dirt never hurt anybody and the time I used to spend cleaning was time I could be quilting.
I feel so unbelievably fortunate to be able to work at home and run this quilting business. I've wanted to own my own business since the age of 12 and every day it just gets better and better.
I wake up excited to start working and often work late into the night because I don't want to stop working! It doesn't feel like a job at all, it feels like a dream come true.
There's a quote I love from the movie American Beauty that goes like this:
"It's
an amazing thing when you wake up and realize you still have the ability
to surprise yourself.
It makes you wonder what else you can do."
If you find my ability to quilt, shoot videos, design quilt patterns, blog, take care of a kid and husband, run a business, and still have time to quilt for fun totally amazing, ask yourself why.
There's a lot more time in the day than you think, and it's amazing what you can do if you only try.
Where can I see all of the designs?
Click here to out all of the designs. These pages are broken into 20 designs per page. To view the design and video, just click the image or the link below it.
You can see up until the recently finished set of 20 designs, so if we're on day 73, you will be able to see up until day 60.
These pages are not easy to code so I only work on them when a full set of 20 designs is done.
How big is the fabric that you use for your sample design?
In
all of the videos and photos on the Free Motion Quilting Project,
I'm working with a 6" piece of fabric with a 4" drawn square
in the center.
I quilt the 4" square outline first, then fill it with the filler design.
If you try this yourself, don't scrimp on fabric. Definitely cut yourself a 6" square because it makes it easy to have something to grip and hold onto while your quilting.
If you cut your square too small, you will end up stitching very close to the edges and your stitch quality may suffer. As a beginner it's very important to give you more than enough room to hang onto the edges so you don't get hung up on the edges of the block.
What do you do with all of the samples after you finished?
While I've had many creative suggestions as to what I should do with all the sample design squares, I'm placing them all within page protector sleeves and into a 3 ring binder.
In order to get them all to fit and be relatively organized, I trim off the excess fabric to within 1/8" around the quilted square then slip 4 at a time into plastic page protector sheets.
I've found that a 1.5" 3 ring binder can hold 100 designs.
I like to take the samples and pin them to my quilts, mixing and matching until I find the fillers that I want in each area of my quilt.
I've also created a sample of 30 beginner designs and connected them together into the Beginner Filler Sampler Quilt. It's really neat to see all the different filler designs and the many textures you can achieve with simple thread designs.
Where can I purchase the DVD or Books of the designs?
A new DVD: Beginner Free Motion Quilting Fillers is scheduled to be released in August 2010. This DVD will feature the 30 designs from the Free Motion Quilting Project also featured in the Beginner Filler Sampler Quilt:
In Beginner Free Motion Quilting Fillers, each design will be stitched out in a new video with black fabric and white thread. Instructions are also given at the end of the DVD to put all the blocks together in a Quilt-As-You-Go technique.
In September 2010, a mini photo book of beginner designs will also be published. From Daisy to Paisley will feature 50 beginner designs, plus Stippling, Paisley, and Pebbling.
Both physical and downloadable versions of the book and DVD will be available when they launch.
Are
the videos in the DVD different
from those shared on the blog?
Yes! In Beginner Free Motion Quilting Fillers all of the videos will be newly shot with a better camera angle, black fabric, and white thread. This high contrast makes seeing the designs much easier as they are formed in free motion quilting.
On the blog project, many of the videos were shot before I really understood what it took to create a high quality video. The new videos feature more of the design and a much clearer explanation of how to use the design in your quilts.
How many pages are in the new book?
From
Daisy to Paisley will be around 75 pages long and feature 50
beginner designs from the Free Motion Quilting Project. This book
is organized by Filler Design Type with loads of information on how
each design works and where they will be the easiest to stitch on
your quilts.
Are you planning on coming out with more DVDs and books?
Yes! I'm already planning a new quilt for Intermediate Free Motion Quilting Fillers - another DVD featuring 30 intermediate level designs.
I'm also planning to write a mini photo book featuring 50 intermediate level designs. The title for that book is still in the works!
After this book and DVD, I'm planning to come out with 2 special sets. One will be called I'm Crazy for Paisley! and feature Paisley / Pivoting designs exclusively.
The second book and DVD set will be called Flower Power and feature all the center filled flower designs.
There's so much to do and so many different possibilities with these designs. If you have a suggestion for something you'd like to see from the project, feel free to contact me and let me know!
Do
you drop your feed dogs and / or
what
stitch length do you use?
For a long time I would religiously drop my feed dogs while free motion quilting. But after awhile, I started forgetting to drop them and actually noticed an improvement in my stitches when they stayed up!
So after stitching on several machines and speaking with many quilters who struggle with tension issues when their feed dogs are dropped, I stopped dropping mine entirely. So far I've seen a huge improvement in my tension and stitch quality by leaving them up.
Now every machine is different, so you just have to play with yours to see what works the best. Generally I advise quilters to turn their stitch length to 0. Your feed dogs will continue to move up and down, but they will not feed the fabric forward.
I also cover my feed dogs with a Supreme Slider, which helps to reduce the friction between the machine bed and the back of the quilt. This makes it much easier to move the quilt around smoothly and evenly in free motion.
Where did you get your sewing table?
I found my first sewing table at a yard sale for $3. This was an unbelievably lucky find and it really changed my quilting ability almost overnight to have my machine on a flush surface with my table.
Unfortunately
you get what you pay for and my $3 table lasted only a few months
before it fell apart.
After a lot of searching, I've found another affordable sewing and quilting table that I now use and take with me for demonstrations and classes.
You can read more about this Arrow Gidget 1 table right here.
Of course, not all machines can fit into this table because it has a fairly small hole cut for the machine. When I purchased my Janome Horizon 7700, I needed a bigger table too!
Luckily Arrow produces the same affordable table with a bigger cut out for the machine to fit inside. Click Here to learn more about the Gidget 2 table.
Of course, this table isn't very big so you'll need to purchase more folding tables at walmart or lowes to finish off your space.
Ideally you'll want to have a good 3-4 feet of table from the back of your machine to the wall and a good 3 ft of table from the left side of your machine to the wall.
I
have a 6ft x 3 ft folding table to the back of my machine and a 4
ft x 2 ft table to the left. This creates kind of an L shaped setup,
but it REALLY works for quilting, especially big quilts.
I think sum total you would only spend around $250 for the sewing table and folding tables if you did it my way, verses thousands of dollars for sewing cabinets that are designed by people who have never sewn a stitch in their life!
It's worth every penny to get a quilting setup that WORKS! Having a good setup often makes the difference between free motion quilting being easy for you or hard.
Do you use a stitch regulator?
No. I personally believe that the best stitch regulators in the world were build inside your hands, feet, and brain. All you have to do is learn to use them properly!
I really discuss speed control and many tips and tricks for finding your speed Vs hand movement ratio in Free Motion Quilting Basics for Beginners, a 2 hour workshop on all the basics of free motion quilting.
How do you get such good control over your speed?
Simply put - practice!
Practice "feathering" your pedal by increasing and decreasing the speed on purpose while stitching in a straight line. Play with increasing and decreasing rapidly until the movement becomes an even flow.
It's good to keep in mind that free motion quilting is not all "pedal to the metal" but it's also not turtle slow either.
Just like a car, you need to be able to slow down to take turns, but then speed up in the open areas or when you have a design so memorized you can stitch it in your sleep.
It takes practice to learn this speed control with your machine. Baste yourself 5 baby quilts or 3 full sized quilts, pick 1 or 2 designs that you like and stitch that design over the whole quilt! By the time you get finished, you will have much better control over the speed and movement of your quilt and your machine.
What machine do you use?
Before I tell you which machine I use, I'd like to first share a very important bit of information with you:
Your machine is just a tool. It's just like a power drill or a belt sander.
What makes one person better at using a tool is practice and experience, not expensive bells and whistles. A $200 drill will work just as badly as a $50 drill in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use it.
I wanted to explain that first because I truly believe that with practice and more experience, YOU CAN QUILT ANY QUILT ON ANY MACHINE!
You don't need the latest and greatest model. You don't need 500 stitches. You just need to sit down at the machine you have and work with it.
Too many quilters have convinced themselves that free motion quilting is not possible without a longarm or a $5,000 machine. This is quite simply not true and I've proven it over and over again by stitching multiple award winning quilts on small domestic machines.
The Duchess was quilted on a Bernina Activa 240. Release Your Light, Shadow Self, and Winter Wonderland were quilted on a Juki TL-98QE. The Duchess Reigns will be stitched on a Janome Horizon 7700.
Now that I can hop off my soapbox, here's the info about my machines:
I've published two articles on finding a good quilting machine. Quilting Machine Conundrum and A New Sewing Machine. These articles explain my personal journey to find the perfect machine for free motion quilting.
Currently I quilt on a Janome Horizon 7700. This is a very large domestic sewing machine that produces beautiful free motion quilting stitches. I purchased this machine from Ye Olde Forest Quilt Shoppe in Greensboro, NC and definitely recommend this dealer for all Janome machines!
Where did you get your free motion foot?
Most of the videos for the first year of the project were quilted on a Juki TL-98 QE. The free motion foot in my videos is the same foot that comes with the Juki. It's simply been modified to be an open toe.
A fellow blogger tried my modifications and has shared photos here. I did not have to use the small piece of wood for my foot, but if you find that the foot is squishing your quilt top, you might want to try it and see if it helps.
Why don't you use a Longarm?
There is a prevailing notion in the quilting world that you're not a professional quilter unless you're using a longarm. I disagree with this notion completely.
I believe you can quilt any quilt you want, even big quilts, so long as you have a good setup with tables and the right tools and supplies to make it easy for you.
What supplies do you recommend?
I
recommend all of the supplies and tools listed in my quilt shop. I
absolutely won't sell anything that I don't use myself on a daily
basis.
The 3 items that took my machine quilting from mediocre to outstanding were:
Supreme Slider - Teflon coated sheet designed to reduce the friction between your quilt and your sewing machine. If you find yourself fighting with your quilt or getting muscle strain from trying to maneuver your quilt inside the throat, definitely try using a slider.
Machingers Quilting Gloves - I was lucky enough to discover these during my very first quilting class and I have never free motion quilted without them. The rubberized fingertips allow you to grip the quilt and control it's movement much more precisely.
Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers - Before I found this product, I would never have dared stitch with contrasting thread or stitched a 2 sided quilt. These washers improve your stitch quality dramatically by reducing thread nests and bobbin tension issues.
These three items are now available in the Ultimate Quilting Kit for just $48.00!
What thread do you use?
I use Isacord polyester thread in both the top and bobbin. This is a thin, affordable, strong thread that seems to do everything I ask before I even ask it (if only if could train my husband as well)!
When I say affordable, this stuff is really affordable! A 1000 yd spool costs only $5!
You really want to avoid using cheap threads, and especially threads that build up a lot of lint as you sew. I personally prefer using polyester thread while quilting because it is very thin, very strong, and lint free.
There is a prevailing notion that polyester threads will shred through cotton fabric as the quilt wears. Personally I haven't seen that this is true at all. In 150 years, it will probably be the polyester thread and polyester batting that is holding my quilts together! All I know is I won't be around to see it!
I have experienced cotton threads degrading and being simply too weak and too thick to produce a beautiful stitch in free motion. Do yourself a favor and don't cheap out when it comes to thread. It will always show in the quality of your stitches and the frustration level you feel at free motion quilting.
When free motion quilting, never mismatch threads. Ever.
Most beginners will put a nice expensive thread in the top of their machine and a cheap thread in the bobbin. This is basically guaranteeing that you're going to have really ugly stitches because these threads are not balanced!
I always quilt with the exact same thread in the top of my machine as in the bobbin. I wind my bobbin from the top thread so the brand, type, and color are all the exact same. This ensures beautiful stitches on both the top and the back of the quilt at all times!
For metallic thread, I use Yenmet Metallic threads. I really like this metallic thread because it's strong, thin, and has a subtle metallic sheen that looks great on the surface of the quilt.
With both of these threads, make sure that you're using the Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers. The threads are so thin, they can often get caught in the bobbin case and cause thread snarls and nests on the back of your quilt. The bobbin washers really help to keep the thread gliding smoothly through the bobbin and onto your quilt.
How can I get better stitch quality?
Practice! When you first get started free motion quilting, it will feel like standing on your head for the first time. It will take some time for you to get used to using your machine in this way and literally drawing with your needle.
The biggest problems beginning quilters have are big stitches. Try slowing down the movement of your hands, bringing them closer to the needle, and increasing the speed of your machine.
If you find that you're getting a lot of bobbin thread on the top or top thread on the back, play with adjusting your tension, and invest in Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers which help to even your bobbin tension and reduce thread nests.
How do you mark your quilt tops?
I really only mark quilting motifs on the surface of my quilt and only when I need the design to be perfectly symmetrical. I don't mark free motion designs as a general rule.
I design my quilting designs on 1" large scale graph paper and then transfer the designs using a lightbox and a blue water soluble pen.
If your quilt is dark, use a Soapstone Marker to mark your quilt so the lines will show up.
I also use Sewline Ceramic Pencils because they're mechanical and so easy to work with. So far I haven't had any trouble getting any of the marks out from any of these three marking devices.
Do
you square your quilt top before quilting?
No. This might be the equivalent to quilting heresy, but I do not square my quilt top before quilting it.
If you're piecing accurately and precisely, then your blocks should be square, the sashing around them should be square, and the borders around the whole quilt should be square.
If you find yourself struggling with this, check out Stitch it Up a Notch: How to Piece Perfect Quilts. This is a terrific ebook I've written to teach you how to piece square and accurately.
Quilting can often distort your quilt, so rather than checking for square in the quilt top, I wait until after the quilt is quilted completely, then I soak the quilt in a bathtub of hot water and block it on large Styrofoam boards that double as my design wall.
After the quilt is dry, I square it using a mat and rotary cutter on the floor and then attach the binding.
Do you roll your quilt into a log before quilting?
Heck no! Think about a log for a minute. Loggers often will float logs down rivers because they are hard to maneuver.
Why in the world would we want to take a flat quilt and roll it up to make it similar to a log? It's like trying to make a car drive easier with 2 wheels!
Instead of rolling my quilt up like a log, I instead slide it under my needle and wiggle my way to the center of the quilt. When quilting on a domestic machine, you always stitch from the center - out.
When I say "wiggle my way" I really mean just that! I don't roll my quilt, I just kind of squish the quilt up against the back of the machine (kind of pleating it, but not really) until I'm in the middle.
The middle is the hardest to quilt, but the fastest area to finish so once it's done, the rest of the quilt is easy.
In the Free Motion Quilting Basics for Beginners DVD I really cover how to quilt big quilts on a domestic sewing machine and how to deal with all the bulk and weight of the quilt in the most effective way.
Note: Many quilters get confused when they read this, then go watch videos on my blog where I work obviously from the edge of a quilt square to the center.
The reason for this is simple: a 4" square is not a quilt!
The free motion quilting tutorials on the 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs Blog are stitched as 4" samples, NOT like real quilts.
If I'm working on anything bigger than 10" I always work from the center to the outside. Always.
If you don't find the answer to your question here, make sure to contact Leah and ask!
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© 2010 by Leah Day
Day
Style Designs Online
P.O Box 386
Earl, NC 28038