Apr 11, 2022

How To Use Candy Cotton Template For Free Motion Quilting

Are you a fan of the meandering free motion quilting design, but want to try something a little different? Does learning how to free-motion quilt without any guidance seem too difficult? Or how about this, do you know a quilter who seems to have everything they could possibly need?

Look no further than the Dabline Quilting Template Set. This set includes 8 well-crafted, easy-to-learn templates. Today, we are going to be taking a look at the popular Candy Cotton Template from our collection.

Make sure you Set Up Your Machine for Quilting with Templates before you start practicing how to use the Candy Cotton template.

Now that you have your machine set up and ready for quilting with templates, you can begin practicing with the Candy Cotton template.

How to Use Dabline’s Candy Cotton Template

Before you dive into stitching onto your freshly completed quilt top that you spend 30+ hours constructing, we always recommend doing some practice movements and stitches on a scrap piece of fabric and batting.

You want to get your hands and brain used to the movements that you will be making while doing free motion quilting with rulers.

To use the candy cotton template you will first need to mark your practice quilt sandwich with 3 different lines. You can use a water-soluble pen or hera marker for this. Just use something that will not make a permanent mark on your quilt.

The first line you draw will need to be at least 1” from the top of the quilt. We are going to draw horizontal lines. Make a line from one side of the quilt sandwich to other.

Next we will measure and make a 2nd mark 5 ¼” down from the first line.

Finally, we will mark in the center of the 2 lines which is 2 ⅝” from either line. The red line is what we will call the “center line”.

Take the quilt sandwich, the candy cotton template, and the template grip to your sewing machine and line up the line of the template that says “center line” with the red center line on the quilt sandwich.

You will now start at the starting position and follow the inside edge of the template with the Free Motion Quilting Foot that you have on your machine. Keep both center lines aligned while you move the template under the needle.

Once you have finished one pass through, you will turn the template and template grip around 90° so your needle is now in the “starting” position. Make sure you line up the center line with the red center line each time you turn the template.

Following the curve of the inside edge, again, move the fabric under the needle, focusing on keeping your movements slow and steady. Take it slow and do several practice passes without using thread to make sure you are comfortable with the movements. You will turn the template 90° each time you finish a pass to go across the quilt sandwich.

Once you are comfortable with the movement, thread your machine and turn it on and follow these steps to quilt your practice quilt quilt several times before jumping into your final project.

I hope these instructions are easy to follow and you have lots of fun decorating your quilt projects with this whimsical, adorable quilt template. We here at Dabline strive to make quilting easy to understand and enjoyable for everyone who tries our products.

Good luck and happy sewing!

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