Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot - a class review and a finish Friday

I've got two finishes to show you this week, and a class review!

Josef Albers inspired modern mini quilt

This is one of the modern mini's I started in March.  I chose several modern artists and made mini quilts inspired by their work.  The quilt above was inspired by Josef Albers and his Homage to the Square series.  Those are all Kona solids, and I quilted it using a radiating lines design with my walking foot.

Next up, is a mini inspired by the work of Mark Rothko.  I used a mixture of Kona solids and Free Spirit solids for this one.  I quilted curvy lines with my walking foot.  I just love the texture it gives to the quilt without throwing the simplicity of the piecing design off balance.

Rothko inspired modern mini

The piecing and color play of these minis were not difficult; however, deciding how to quilt them was a bit of a challenge.  I was afraid that my usual "quilt the daylights" out of a piece would ruin the simple lines of the piecing.  Lucky for me, a solution presented itself when I took a new Craftsy class by Jacquie Gering called Creative Quilting With Your Walking Foot (affiliate link).  Jacquie teaches how she likes to quilt her beautiful modern quilts, using her walking foot.

I feel using a walking foot takes a little stress out of quilting.  With free motion quilting, you have more variations in design possibilities, but you have to constantly be thinking about consistent stitch length.  The walking foot is essentially designed to give you consistent stitches.  If you thought you would be limited to just straight lines, you are wrong.  Jacquie shows how to do curvy lines like the ones in my Rothko quilt above, as well as circles and spirals.  There are also segments for radiating designs like the ones in my Albers inspired quilt above, turning designs, how to quilt text into your background (like she did on her Building Bridges quilt below), and even a segment on how to use some of your decorative stitches with your walking foot.  Want to know how to do matchstick quilting?  It's covered!

quilting text into your background like this on "Building Bridges" by Jacquie Gering

This class would be excellent for someone just learning how to quilt and who might be a little timid about free-motion quilting.  It would also be great for someone who does a lot of free-motion quilting and might want to change things up a bit.  Jacquie shows you that there are multiple looks you can achieve with your walking foot and that you aren't limited to straight lines in the ditch.  I really enjoyed the radiating lines segment, and I am really looking forward to trying continuous spirals on my next modern mini.

Jacquie's teaching style is so relaxed.  If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know I am not very friendly to the idea of "Quilt Police".  That's not to say I am a "rules are meant to be broken" type of gal either.  It is just that I quilt to have a creative outlet and to have fun.  If I allow myself to get too weighed down with "should's" and "always" rules, it becomes a little less fun for me.  Jacquie does an excellent job of teaching you how she does these techniques, without any egotism about it being the only way.  Plus she is light and funny.  I feel like I could spend days with her and the time would just fly by.

I highly recommend this class!

Thanks for reading today,

Jen


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