A Word About Walking Feet

Raise your hand if you want to know more about walking feet! You're at the right place then :) New quilters often have questions such as "What is a Walking Foot and What is it Used for?" and "Which Walking Foot Should I Buy?" So to answer a few of those questions:

WHAT IS A WALKING FOOT

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A walking foot is a sewing machine part used to help feed thick fabric through a machine. It has an extra set of feed-dogs on the bottom of the foot to help guide layers of fabric through evenly.

WHAT IS A WALKING FOOT USED FOR?

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A walking foot is a quilter's best friend. It is used for 2 steps in the quilting process:

1. Straight line machine quilting.

The walking foot is a cousin to the darning foot (the darning foot is used for free motion quilting that is not for straight lines) The walking foot makes the thick *quilt-sandwich feed through the machine more smoothly. 

2. Binding.

A walking foot is used when machine attaching a quilt binding. The walking foot helps the *quilt-sandwich run through the machine in an efficient manner when sewing on the pesky binding. Kidding about that pesky part but not about the efficiency ;)

*A quilt sandwich consists of three basted (aka safety-pinned) layers: the pieced quilt top, batting, and backing fabric.

WHICH WALKING FOOT SHOULD I BUY?
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The real question here is what walking foot should you NOT buy. The number one rule is DO NOT buy a walking foot with a plastic hook that attaches to your screw, buy a metal one. (Does anyone have a name for that thingamajig?!) Both of our plastic walking feet jammed on the first day of use. The metal foot has been our best friend through it all!

Another suggestion is to buy a walking foot with a guide. This helps to keep your lines straight. It's kinda important...just sayin'

Note: Please ignore the plastic hooky-thing we know we just discussed (Rule number one is still in force). This is the only picture we had of the guide...so just go with it :)

Rule number three is pretty easy. Make sure to buy a foot that works for your brand of sewing machine. Most walking feet are universal so don't sweat it too much. And have fun with your new gizmo!

Monday

A stack of squares from Sunday night sewing. Try saying that 5 times in a row. We dare you!

Aaaaaaaand we scored Simply Retro for $10 at JoAnn's. Camille's book is marvelous.

 

Plus we cut 130- 8" batting squares for a rag quilt. It's been a while and we are itching to sew the batting scraps into a quilt.

Scrappy Squares Quilt Tutorial

Ready for the easiest quilt tutorial of your life? Brace yourself :) Finished quilt measures 45" x 60".

For one block you will need the following:

Layout your pieces as shown below:

Sew the middle row together, then sew all three rows together to complete the block. The block should measure 8" square. (Once sewn into the quilt, the blocks will measure 7.5".)

Make 48 total blocks. Sew the blocks in 8 rows of 6 each. 

Told you it was easy :)

P.S. For more pictures of this quilt go here.
P.P.S. Man, now we want to make another scrappy squares quilt.

Granny Squares Quilt Tutorial

Today we would like to share with you how to make a scrappy granny square block. The finished blocks will measure 9" before sewn into a quilt top. The finished quilt will be twin sized, about 68" x 85".

For one quilt block you will need:

13- 2.5" white squares

12- 2.5" scrap squares

Layout your squares in rows, as shown above.

Sew your squares together into rows. Press.

Square up your block to 9". There should be roughly 1/4" space between the tips of your granny squares and the edge of your block (pictured below):

Note:  Squaring these blocks is a little tricky. Be careful when you are squaring, because sewing can be difficult. Little notches can equal holes, and we wouldn't want that :)

 

Make 80 blocks total. Layout your blocks in 10 rows of 8 blocks each. Sew. Then run outside and do a happy dance :)

12 Machine Quilting Tutorials

We wanted to put together machine quilting tutorials for us quilters who don't use long-arm machines. We gathered together some cute ideas from Pinterest and the links are provided below. Enjoy!

1. Overlapping Circles
 


2. Orange Peel



3. Dogwood



4. Baptist Fans



5.  Clamshell Loop



6. Pebbles



7. Flowers



8. Loopy Flowers



9. Straight Lines



10. Two-Pass Circle

 

11. Spiral Chain

(Photo found here)

12. Big Diamond, Little Diamond

Wallflowers Design Contest

 

If you haven't heard already, there is a quilt design contest going on right now for Cluck Cluck Sew's new fabric line: Wallflowers. Patterns are created via Threadbias (which is easy to use!) and a winner will be selected soon. 

Here is our design, Flourish:

Come and check us out...and join Threadbias (for free!) so you can vote for us! We're crossing our fingers that we'll win because, let's face it, who wouldn't want to win the Wallflowers fabric collection and Allsion's Growing Up Modern Book? Signed, none the less!

We will make this Flourish design into a pattern you can purchase once we get around to it. No promises on how soon ;)

Happy Quilting!
Anna and Sarah

25 Free Quilt Patterns

There are so many creative people out there. Like a bunch. So we thought it would be fun to throw together a collection of links to free quilt tutorials made by you. Enjoy!

1. Eli's Wheels

2. Forties Chevron

3. Garden Fence 

4. Kissing Fish

5. Peppermint Pinwheels

6. Sweet Girlie 

7. Baby Chevron (3-Part Tutorial)

8. Bow-tie Blocks 

9. Bow-tie Quilts 

 10. Cartwheels

11. Cracker Scraps

12. Double Hourglass

13. Gather Love 

14. Granny Squares

15. Jumping Jacks

16. Ombre Quilts

17. Patchwork Chevron 

18. Penelope's Stars

19. Samurai Stars 

20. Squares and Strips Bed Quilt 

21. Simple Stripes Quilt

22. Equilateral Triangle Quilt 

23. Tumbler Quilt

24. Wonky Windows Quilt

25. Ziggy Quilt