Most of the quilts I have done to date have actually been quilt tops, that is they have just been the equivalent of the top layer(s) of fabric of a quilt without the layer of batting or backing that makes up a traditional quilt. The last quilt I made involved the trapunto technique and therefor required the use of batting and involved actual quilting. I liked the look and decided to employ it again with this quilt.

The appliqué technique I’m using on the green squares could be done perfectly flat with just interfacing the way I had been doing the previous quilts but I decided to add a little dimensionality and use batting instead. For the white squares I knew I definitely wanted to have the quilting show so the batting was a must there. But I was unsure what pattern to use. After staring at Lib’s quilt and the squares I had printed for a while (ok days) I decided to try my hand at freehand quilting.

Freehand (also know as freeform) quilting is when you basically just quilt the fabric topping and batting together however you want instead following a designated pattern. Since I had a couple of extra printed white squares to play with I thought I would give this a try with one of the spares. (I knew I printed extras for a reason!)

There is also something far more involved called freemotion machine quilting. This involves use of a special foot and figuring out how to disengage your feed dogs (the little things under the foot that grab at the material and automatically advance the material for you). This allows you to manually move the material back and forth and side to side under the needle to control the movement of the sewing line across the material, hence freemotion. I liked the look of the sample square I did but I think that freemotion quilting will give me more control of the line.

I’ve done some sleuthing through my owners manual and figured out how to disengage my feed dogs. Not easy on my machine but doable. So now I just need to make a trip to JoAnn’s Fabric this weekend (drat).