Click Here to find the pattern for Block 8 – the Patchy Octagon. All the tutorials and patterns for this quilt along will remain online indefinitely so you can catch up and work at your own pace.

 

Click Here to check out the Eversewn Sparrow 20, a terrific machine for beginning sewists and quilters. James used the open toe walking foot and the darning foot from the Deluxe Foot Kit to quilt his block.

The first step to teaching anyone how to do anything is making sure they want to learn. James was obviously in a great mood on the day we filmed this and was eager to try quilting.

 

Walking foot quilting is much easier to learn and teach than free motion quilting. The reason is the walking foot and the machine both feed the quilt to make perfect, evenly spaced stitches.

 

As you can see in the video, James had more trouble putting too much pressure on the quilt and limiting its movement. I lifted his hands (and wiggled them a lot to make him relax) and showed him how to guide the quilt block using just his fingertips.

Free motion quilting, on the other hand, is pretty tricky. For this style of quilting you use a darning foot and must push the quilt over the machine at a steady rate, matching with the speed of the needle bouncing up and down.

 

James immediately felt like his stitches didn’t look very good and he had a lot more trouble following the circle I marked using a circle template from the Dresden Plate Template Set.

 

After a few circles, he was done. That’s another tip for teaching quilting to a kid – don’t push it too long.

I quilted the remaining circles and added a bit of personalization by quilting “James 2019” inside a circles. I started doing this lately and I really love it. Adding a bit of text and especially the date makes the project more meaningful. The way projects blur together, I might not remember I made this quilt in 2019 or that James quilted this particular block with me, but now I will!

I hope you’ll try teaching the kids in your life how to quilt. It requires patience and energy to explain the steps repeatedly and keep an eye on the progress, but the end result is super rewarding. While this is the simplest block I’ve quilted for the Friendship Quilt Along so far, it’s now my favorite!

Until next week, let’s go quilt,

 

Leah Day