ECHO QUILTING

This month BERNINA have their CutWork and free-motion quilting foot on special.

Bernina no.44C foot | my-sewing-supplies - link to our store

It's known as the 44C foot. This foot has many uses and there is a summary below. Thank you BERNINA Australia, for your summary and printable sheet that we have available below.

This foot is:

• Ideal for a host of creative sewing projects

• For echo and shadow quilting, free-motion quilting, thread painting and free-motion embroidery

• Concentric circular markings and a crosshair for precise positioning of stitches

• Excellent cutting results on CutWork designs

• For 5.5 mm and 9 mm machines

Quilted Jacket

What is Echo Quilting?

Echo quilting is a technique where rows of evenly spaced stitching are quilted around applique shapes or motifs, creating a repeating pattern of stitching lines that “echo” the original shape. It can be done by hand, or by free-motion machine stitching. It is commonly used on quilts, but is also a very effective design to add texture and interest to your next winter jacket. Quilt coats are all the rage.

Echo quilting will be most successful on a thick fabric, such as a medium - heavy wool coating or on a quilt ‘sandwich’ - a layer batting/ wadding sandwiched between a layer of woven cotton on top and underneath. Thin fabrics will likely pucker too much.

What to do:

Prepare your quilt sandwich

Add the BERNINA #44C Echo Quilting / Cutwork foot to your machine

Lower the feed dogs of your machine

Thread the machine in your choice of thread. This could be decorative, but please be kind to yourself and test the thread on samples first. Remember this is a learned technique and will take you a little time to master. Standard weight threads will tension better and more easily. Once you have mastered this you can move to more decorative finishes and make tension and needle adjustments more knowledgably.

Draw a shape on your fabric with fabric chalk or wash-away pen. It’s easiest with smooth gentle curved shapes, but feel free to experiment.

Start moving the fabric around under the foot of the machine, slowly and smoothly following your marked line.

Because the feed dogs are dropped, you moving the fabric is what creates your stitch length. Keep your movement slow and steady.

Once you reach the end of your chalk line, use the edge of the echo quilting foot as a guide.

Line it up with your first stitching line and continue stitching around your first shape.

Continue echoing until you fill up the space. Don’t worry about it being perfect because overall it creates texture

Tips

If making a garment, cut out your garment pieces with approx 5cm extra around all edges and quilt the individual garment pieces.

It is easier to quilt with smaller pieces than it is to quilt one giant piece.

The fabric will shrink a little with the quilting.

Having your machine flat bedded into a table or using your sew table to create a bigger flat surface will make this easier.

Wearing grippy quilting gloves can help you move the fabric around the machine more easily.

Here is a printable version of the instructions

Echo quilting 44c foot bernina.pdf

Download PDF • 213KB

Want to stretch your skills further?

You could also use this foot in machine embroidery mode and make cutwork designs. Here is a video on how this tool works.

Tutorial: how to use the BERNINA echo quilt and CutWork foot no. 44

Link to purchase the cutwork tool

Cutwork Tool | my-sewing-supplies

We hope you have learnt something new today

Happy Sewing

Bernadette, Ian, Crystal, Vicky, Sarah and Lauren