My Quilt Prep Day: Getting Swayful Ready for Free-Motion Quilting
Before the quilting begins, every quilt has a prep day.
It’s not the most glamorous part of the process, but it’s one of the most important. Taking a little time to choose the right backing, prepare your batting, and baste your quilt well can make the quilting itself so much smoother.
In this week’s video, I’m bringing you along as I get my Swayful quilt ready for free-motion quilting. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the workflow I use before I ever sit down at my sewing machine.
New Here?
There are lots of ways to quilt alongside me:
- Browse Freebies for free patterns and downloads.
- Explore Quilt Alongs for step-by-step quilting projects.
- Visit Quilty Class for self-paced quilting classes.
- Join Quilty Club for access to every class and monthly project.
No matter where you are in your quilting journey, there’s a place to start.
What You’ll See in This Video
During this quilt prep day, I share:
- How I choose a backing fabric for a quilt.
- Why I like using Warm & Natural cotton batting.
- Cutting my backing and batting on my Kookaburra Cutting Table.
- Using Batting Together Tape to join batting scraps.
- Basting the quilt before quilting begins.
While this video follows my Swayful quilt, these are the same steps I use for nearly every quilt I make.
Looking for more quilt patterns?
Browse our 8 most popular quilt patterns →
Resources Mentioned
- Swayful Quilt Pattern
- Swayful Quilty Class
- Shop All Quilt Patterns
- SCQ Wide Back Fabrics
- Warm & Natural Batting
- Finish It! Class
- Kookaburra Cutting Table
- Batting Together Tape
- Dingo Table
Ready to Start Your Own Swayful Quilt?
If you’ve been thinking about making Swayful, I’d love to have you sew along with me. Find the class here.
The Swayful Quilty Class walks you through every step, from choosing fabrics and making the blocks to preparing your quilt for quilting and stitching the free-motion quilting designs.
Whether you’re making Swayful or another quilt entirely, I hope this video gives you a little inspiration for your own quilt prep day.
Looking for free quilting tutorials and projects?
You can explore the Southern Charm Quilts Resource Library for free downloads, beginner-friendly quilting help, and printable patterns. I also have a large collection of free quilt alongs available on this site if you’d like to work through a quilt step by step alongside me.
