Free Motion Lily of the Valley Treadle Quilting Tutorial
The Lily of the Valley, is a beautiful flower with endearing tiny bell shaped flowers. They grow from an underground rhyzome and the bell flowers are mostly white and rarely pink against a background of strappy green leaves. As the plant matures through the season it develops little red berries. The plant by nature comes into a similar group of toxicity to Digitals or Foxgloves. Better known these days as the cardiac drug Digoxin. Despite its poisonous nature the plant is nevertheless very beautiful and I thought, a perfect subject for free motion quilting.
I must say that I was also inspired by a beautiful little 3/4 machine which I found that has the remnants of Lily of the Valley, which to be honest, I’m not sure if they are decals or hand painted.
New White Peerless Antique Sewing Machine
So I decided to quilt Lily of the Valley flowers into my current quilt project. I’m also captivated by the colours of the Peace Rose, being pink and lemon, and so it is, that I have decided on pale pink Rasant thread on a pale lemon background.
I believe its a perfect design for Free Motion Quilting. Its easily made into a continuous line drawing with the loops representing the berries.
This is how I did it.
I quilted this design with a treadle from 1937. If you love FMQ or even if you have never tried it, its fun, it doesn’t havre to be perfect – thats the beauty of it!
Singer 31K20 Industrial Treadle 1937
Of course, I would always recommend drawing it on paper first. This will prepare your mind for the quilting process.
You can read more about this process here.
Free Motion Quilting Part 2 The Sewing Set Up
The Lily of the Valley is quite a small flower so these are much larger than real life, but that’s artistic license for you!
So this is my most recent quilting project. I love free motion. It’s beautiful and really quite forgiving. Give it a try.
This quilting has been done on a new quilt design called Vintage Twist. Here is the link to that quilt story and free tutorial.
Vintage Twist Baby Quilt Tutorial
This is a quick piecing quilt.
