Quilt Gentle Curves with the Walking Foot
Curves Open Up a Whole New World of Straight Line Quilting!
Straight line quilting with the walking foot is a mainstay for quilters. Quilters who have mastered free motion quilting often do straight line quilting, as well, for things like stitching in the ditch or as the perfect touch for certain quilts.
Some quilters focus on straight line quilting throughout their entire quilting careers, never moving into free motion quilting. But, we’ve heard several say they get bored with doing straight lines and want more options.
Fortunately, there are creative options for quilting with a walking foot that you may not have thought of. Simply adding curves will greatly expand your straight line quilting repertoire.
Gentle curves are entirely doable with the walking foot and add movement, interest and texture to a quilt (for example, cables, which we wrote about here).
Curves are easy to do and don’t require any special tools or skills. Plus, there are many ways you can use curves. Free-form curves can produce a wavy overall pattern. Curves can also be controlled to create more traditional quilting designs.
For example, the following Orange Peel quilting design, which is usually done with free motion quilting, can easily be done with a walking foot.
Here’s another example of a design that can be created with a walking foot.
In the following video Jacquie Gering shows you how to get started with gently curved quilting designs using the walking foot. You’ll find that it’s quite easy to do and that the design options are unlimited.
Click here to watch the video at YouTube if it doesn’t play on your device.
Image source: The image at the top of the page is from Cindy Roth.
