Variations with Debby Brown

By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador

There are good learning opportunities during the Cyber Quilt Show created by Handi Quilter. I’ve been watching and rewatching a workshop called “Variations” with HQ National Educator Debby Brown.

I’m spending a lot of time learning all about free-motion machine quilting these days, so Debby’s friendly video class (free, no less!) was a welcome resource.

The idea behind Variations is to take one machine quilting motif and explore all the ways it can be altered to create new designs.

She uses what she calls Ribbon Candy as the basis for her Variations. Ribbon Candy looks just as you’d expect: regular up and down swirls in a line. I practiced a couple of rows on my warmup sandwich.

I had a crib-size improv quilt top pin basted and ready to go. I made it for an exercise in The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood. It was pretty fast to sew and I didn’t have a big emotional investment. As an added bonus, it was fairly busy so if my Ribbon Candy was awful, it wouldn’t show too much.

I didn’t mark anything. The piecing is wonky enough that I wasn’t worried about straight rows of quilting. They could be wonky, too. I began with simple Ribbon Candy. I tended to leave space between the swirls so I worked to close those spaces.

Debby describes how to vary Ribbon Candy to make hearts, so I tried those next. Maybe it was the peachy color but I thought mine looked like bare bottoms.

When I closed the spaces at the bottom, they looked more like hearts. Sigh of relief.

If you keep practicing, they do improve. But it was time to move forward.

Per Debby’s instructions, I overlapped the motif to get a hairpin lace look. Not my favorite, so I only did a partial row. When it’s for practice, you can do that.

I tried another idea from the workshop by echo quilting underneath the motifs a few times.

This will take some practice but it has potential.

I echo quilted at the top and the bottom, and some places are better than others. It’s easier for me to do short waves than long waves. There’s always something to learn!

It’s also a different experience if you draw them as hills or as valleys. It didn’t even feel like the same skillset to me. I’ll have to try it each way on another sample and see which is easier.

I’m pretty happy with this overall. It’s finished except for binding, and finished is better than perfect.

There is something about telling yourself that

you’re quilting for practice

that frees you up not to stress over the quality. Less stress means more fun. More fun means more practice, and practice just means that you’ll improve.

You’ll get better and better!