BERNINA Corporate Blog -I have been eying up quilted tees and sweatshirts on several ready-to-wear sites, and I thought I would love to try my hand at some apparel quilting. I used the BERNINA Echo Quilting and Cutwork Foot with a couple of my favourite sewing patterns to test it out.
Materials Needed:
- Sewing Machine BERNINA 590
- Sewing machine feet:
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- Reverse Pattern Foot #1D (for use with Dual Feed)
- Echo Quilting and CutWork Foot #44C
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- Sewing Machine Needle to suit your fabric
- Patterns, Fabrics
- Coordinating threads.
- Erasable sewing chalk
- Temporary spray adhesive
*TIP: If you would like the quilting stitches to blend, choose a thread to match your fabric. If you would like it to stand out and draw more attention, choose a coordinating or contrasting thread colour.
Project Patterns for Quilted Tops:
I made two types of apparel for this project: a black quilted sweatshirt and a pink quilted tee. You can use any pattern you wish. I would suggest sizing up at least one size when sewing a quilted top, at least for the front pattern piece. This allows for enough ease since quilting the fabric will reduce the amount of stretch in your knit fabric.
Black Quilted Sweatshirt
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Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater
- Please note: this is NOT a free pattern, but you can likely find many free sweatshirt pdf patterns with a quick search of the internet
- French terry knit fabric for sweatshirt
- 1/2 to 1 yard of thinner, knit fabric to layer for the quilted front – I used cotton lycra knit because a double layer of french terry would be very heavy
Pink Quilted Tee
- Greenstyle Patterns Green Tee. If you become a member of their Facebook Group page you will find a coupon code in the pinned post so you can get this pattern FREE! It is a semi-fitted short or long-sleeved t-shirt with a scoop neck and a V-neck option.
- Cotton jersey knit fabric
- 1/2 to 1 yard extra fabric to layer for the quilted tee front
For this version I selected thread one shade lighter to make the quilting ‘pop’.
Preparing your Fabric for Quilted Tops
Take your front pattern piece (I suggest at least one size larger than your regular size) and trace it onto your fabric with chalk. I used a projector pattern for the black version of the shirt, so I projected the pattern onto the fabric and traced the outline. For the pink tee, I traced around the pattern piece. and cut the fabric larger than the pattern all around.
Preparing Your Fabric For Quilting
Tracing the Pattern Pieces
Cut a second piece of fabric approximately the size of the fabric that you traced the pattern piece outline on. Do not cut these pieces to size, but keep them larger than the pattern piece. This is to make it easier to manage when quilting.
Using temporary spray adhesive, spray the wrong sides of the fabric pieces and place them together. These two pieces will be quilted together and then sewn as one.
Spray the two layers of shirt front fabrics with temporary adhesive to hold them together for quilting.
Planning your Quilted Top Design
I used chalk and drew large designs scattered across the front pattern pieces. For the black sweatshirt, I used a daisy design. For the pink tee, I used large leaf shapes.
Freehand leaves drawn with chalk. The rest of the quilting lines will be added with the BERNINA Foot #44C as a guide.
*TIP: For the daisy motif, I found a quilting design online and projected it onto the front of my fabric. I then traced the outline of the daisies. For the echo quilting, I didn’t bother to trace as I knew I would be using the markings on Foot #44C to the echo effect.
Trace the large motifs with chalk, which will then be quilted with echo quilting.
Preparing your Machine for BERNINA Foot #44
If you have never used the echo quilting foot #44C, here is a tutorial from BERNINA to give you an overview.
When you enter the presser foot selection into your BERNINA sewing machine, the machine ensures that you have the correct settings. You will need to put the feed dogs down, and you can use the straight stitch cover plate if your machine has one. For BERNINA users, it is the plate with an orange marking.
Bernina Echo Quilting and Cutwork Foot #44C
Select the correct presser foot on the BERNINA interface.
Quilting your Fabric
If you have quilting gloves, they help to grip the fabric as you move it around and quilt it.
Stitch out your design on your fabric. I used the lines on the foot cup so I could easily echo the motif designs in narrower and wider paths. Fill in the remaining areas of the fabric with free motion stitching.
The markings on the BERNINA Foot #44C help mark the distances between the echol quilting lines.
I used the BERNINA Foot #44 markings to make narrower and wider echo quilting patterns.
Finishing Your Quilted Top
After completing your quilting, lay your quilted top front pattern piece over the quilted area and cut out the fabric.
Following the pattern instructions, complete the sewing of your top. You will want to rinse or wash your completed garment to remove the chalk markings and the temporary adhesive from the quilted layers.
*TIP: If your fabric is dryer-safe, putting it in the dryer will add puckering and texture to the quilted front. I love the way this gives the quilting a dimension effect.
Quilted Greenstyle Tee
Quilted Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater
I hope you try out some apparel quilting and share your creations. Be sure to tag me @ManitoulinThreads on Instagram and please comment below about patterns that you try this technique with!
Happy stitching!
Heather @ManitoulinThreads🧵✂
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