Following up on the concepts introduced in her first DVD, “Master Machine Quilting: Free-Motion Stitching and Thread Sketching,” Quilting Arts columnist Susan Brubaker Knapp delves even deeper, teaching you how to add color, dimension, texture, pattern, line, and movement to your quilts using thread. After a quick overview of the basic materials you’ll need, as well as some helpful tools to make things easier, Susan breaks down each of the six topics (from color to movement) and provides step-by-step machine stitching demos. She shows numerous samples that illustrate the basic thread-sketching concepts being discussed. Prepare to expand your view of the opportunities for using stitch on your quilts.

• Fabrics: high-quality cotton commercial prints, hand-dyes, and batiks, washed (without fabric softener) to remove sizing
• Threads: lightweight cotton thread (I use mostly Aurifil Cotton Mako 40 and 50.)
• Stabilizer (I use Pellon® 100% polyester sew-in interfacing #910 or Heavy Weight Shaping Aid. Use a fairly stiff nonwoven interfacing; flimsy, flexible interfacings will not work.)
• Fusible product with at least one paper side (I use Lite Steam-A-Seam 2® by The Warm™ Company.)
• Pins: straight quilting pins and “pregnant” quilter’s pins (the ones with the bump in them)
• Needles: Universal 80/12 or Microtex 70/10
• Sewing machine that can drop its feed dogs, and that has a free-motion quilting or darning foot with a large open area

Optional

• Helpful tools: Grabaroo’s® Gloves, Supreme Free-Motion Slider™, Quilt Halo, finger cots