ESSENTIAL GUIDE

“Home quilting curved patterns can be very satisfying to sew and we explore some simple shapes to develop your quilting skills”
– Lin Clements

CURVED QUILTING

In Issue 74 of Today’s Quilter, we looked at the preparation needed for successful machine quilting and, in Issue 75, we explored simple linear quilting patterns. Here, we will discover how to machine quilt simple curved patterns. By ‘simple’ I mean patterns that can be quilted by relatively inexperienced sewers, and patterns that do not require the skills of free-motion quilting.

By inclination, I’m a designer and a piecer who gets much of my pleasure from these aspects of patchwork, but I’ve always wanted to find the time to learn all the skills of free-motion quilting. Until I find that time, I get by with simple machine quilting, and this article shows some of the curved patterns I find most useful, particularly on small projects. For really easy curved quilting, you can simply echo quilt a ¼in away from the curved shapes in your patchwork, but here we will be a little more adventurous. shows some of the shapes that can be achieved at home with the feed dogs engaged, and in this article we will look at how these shapes can be drawn and transferred to fabric as quilting patterns. We