First make up a practice sandwich using some spare fabric, then your chosen wadding and a piece of fabric to back it. This will not be seen once the cushion is finished. I have used an old duvet cover.
Below the blue fabric is the fleece and the red an old jumper.
Pin and tack the sandwiches together - or use safety pins to hold all three layers together so that they don’t slip. (You can buy special quilting safety pins which are curved and easier to insert and remove)
Now you are ready to quilt.
First remove the presser foot from your machine, and use a darning foot if you have one. If not, be very careful and use the bare needle. Be sure to keep your fingers well away from the needle.
Next, lower the feed dogs - the zigzag sections which push the fabric along underneath the needle- you are going to do the pushing, so you don’t need them.
Below you can see my darning foot and the feed dogs are raised.
Here they are, lowered.
Now put your fabric under the foot, lower it (you will have to lower the lever even if you aren’t using a foot!) Lower the needle into the fabric and guide the fabric around one of the shapes on your fabric - I have sewn around the owls here.
Use the practice pieces to get the hang of it. You may find it easier to control the fabric if you wear a rubber glove or a (clean!) gardening glove which has grips on the fingers. I cut the fingers off!
You can see from the photo that the fleece and old jumper linings are equally effective to give some texture.
Then I drew a larger owl to use as a template for the plain sections of my block. The outline can be drawn on to the fabric, especially if you have a special fabric pen, whose ink is water, air or heat soluble.
I could also embroider on to my large owls....
this is the block for the front of my cushion.
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