Free-Motion Quilting with Freezer Paper

If you're trying to add a specific motif onto your quilt way or quilting, or maybe you're trying to leave a specific area untouched from your quilting. And you're looking for an easy way to mark that, the solution is actually freezer paper, or some kind of wax bag paper. So freezer paper or your wax bag paper, will have a paper side, and then it has one side that is sort of waxy and shiny. So it's very easy to see which side is which. The great thing about this paper is, when you actually put it onto fabric and heat it with an iron it's going to temporarily stick it to the fabric, making it the perfect marking utensil. You don't have to worry about whether it's, will wash away or remove, no residues left behind. So it's a really easy way to mark your quilt. So say you want to design, have a specific motif for design and quilt it or leave that space open, you can actually just take whatever that design is. So if you have one in mind, that's great. If not, you can just Google for a simple coloring page. Kids coloring pages are a great one, just a simple design. And then you just want to trace that onto the paper side of your wax paper. So another good thing about it is that it's very very easy to see through and easy to trace. So I'm just going to come in here and trace right around my shape. Now, obviously there's some extra detail in this flower, uh, that I'm not tracing because there's really, um, that's not what I'm trying to add. I really just am going for the outline of the shape. So when you are working with this or practicing it for the first time, the simpler the design, the better. So I've just traced the perimeter of that design and now I'm going to cut it out. So I do want to cut it out, pretty much right on the lines that I drew. So I like to roughly cut it out first, get rid of the remainder of the paper. And then I'm going to come in and cut this out. So when you've done other kind of markings, or you've maybe stitched over paper before, that is something you can do and then tear the paper away. But I find that freezer paper doesn't actually tear away as easily as other paper. So I don't actually want to stitch through it, I really just want to stitch around it. So I'm going to go ahead and come in here with my scissors and cut out all around the shape. So again, I mentioned, this is a fun one to do if you have a shape in mind, um, and if not, it's an easy one to search out. But it's also fun if maybe you are just getting into quilting with your kids and they've helped you maybe pick out colors for a quilt, or helped you in somehow, you know, design or piece it. They can actually help with the quilting process too because you can give them a piece of this freezer paper, have them doodle the designs that they want quilted on it. And then you can use this method to adhere your little freezer paper stencil onto your quilts, and then quilt right around that drawing that they did. So a fun way to include them, into the quilting process as well. So I have this all cut out, and now I'm ready to put it onto my quilt's sandwich. So here's my miniature little quilt. Obviously I have my batting, backing and my quilt top. And I just want to fuse my freezer paper onto my quilt. So I'm going to bring in my pressing mat, lay it wherever it is I want it. So for this example, it's just going to be right in the center. And I'm just going to heat it with my iron. So I have a medium high heat iron, no steam and that's pretty much the perfect setting. So think about the setting for freezer paper, is sort of the same setting for if you're doing any kind of fusable web or fusable interfacing or things like that. You want to make sure that it is stuck on there, so you can use your finger, and make sure all of your points are stuck down. Especially if it's a pointier image like this one here, um, and then you let it cool a little bit. So what's happening when you're using the freezer paper, is you're kind of melting the back of that wax just a little bit and that's what's allowing it to stick to your fabric. So you want to let it cool down just a little bit before you pick it up and manipulate it. Now, once you have this in place, you can take this over to your machine and do some free motion quilting. So you have a couple options of how you want to quilt this. So you can either say you want to leave this space open. So that's the reason why you wanted to have this shape, is because that's the shape that you didn't want to see any of, um, in your quilting. We'll just pretend I'm starting right here in this, edge. So my goal is to just do a lot of fill stitches, around that shape. I can do that, just random stitches, zigzags, swirls, whatever you want all the way around, and then not hit this area. And I'm going to have this fun shape that's left, when I actually take my freezer paper off, that hasn't been quilted. The other option you can do is actually use this as a stencil, and go all the way around it. So rather than using it as a negative space, I'm going to come and quilt all the way around it. And I can get as close to it as I want, coming around and use this as a way to trace my shape. So whether you want to quilt that shape onto your quilt by going around the perimeter of it, or you just want to leave that shape as excess negative space and do fill stitches around it. You can easily mark out that space using freezer paper, next time you use your free motion quilting.