Fantabulous Free-hand Fans!

Quiltville Custom Quilting
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Fantabulous Free-hand Fans!
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Free-hand fans are a marvelous, folksy way to quilt. They take a bit of practice and confidence, but once you get the hang of it, they really are easy. We're going to make it even easier by starting with a bit of marking. We are marking without a stencil, so your fans will still have plenty of character.

Take a piece of fabric that you love or hate. You can consider it a doll quilt or a baby blanket or a practice piece. Whatever will allow you to relax and ENJOY trying this method. Doesn't have to be huge, 20" x 20" should give you plenty of room to practice. The fewer the seams the better. You could do something that size and not even put borders on it if you don't want to. Baste it up with your backing (no seams will be easier) and batting (I love 80% cotton 20% poly but Bonnie swears by 100% cotton..either quilter's dream or hobbs organic!).

This is my very simple Cranky Witch top that I'm going to quilt free-hand fans all over:

Here's one of the witches up close, auditioning the quilting thread. That's size 8 perle cotton on the left, regular quilting thread on the right. I didn't like how her face is obscured with the thicker thread, so I decided to quilt with regular quilting thread.

My next step was to find something circular to use as a template for the smallest arc. I tried demitasse cups, the bottom of drinking glasses, plastic lids from various containers, and finally settled on this little jam jar. All my various arcs which I soaped on as I decided which size I liked best are still showing. Don't stress about this too much. Really. If you don't have a sliver of soap you like to mark with, you can use a chalk pencil or blackboard chalk. Blue markers work as well, but be sure that you test it on the fabric to see that it will come out.

By the way, I am a rightie, so I always start in the lower right hand corner. I suspect that lefties would want to reverse that and start in the lower left.

Yes, I've heard that you're always supposed to start quilting in the center of a quilt. (Who started this rule? The Quilt Police?) I don't and I've never had a problem. Baste the quilt really well and no fullness will be pushed towards the center as you work from the outside in. I start my fans at the bottom and work my way either around or up. On my house quilts I bop from one area to another, quilting whatever takes my fancy.

Sometimes the initial arc will be flat, sometimes it will bulge on the top or bottom. It's ALL alright. It all works and it will all look good in the end. Just do it.

I initially decided to make my arcs as wide apart as the first joint on my pinkie. It's just easy to use a "tool" that you always have with you. So here I am making marks.

And here are the marks. I was trying to make mine big enough so that you could see them. You can either quilt using just the marks themselves OR you can draw each arc out, then quilt it. You can quilt an arc, mark the next one, quilt it, mark, etc OR Draw them all out first. Your choice.

Here's a few of them drawn out. Note that they aren't smooth. They don't have to be. And they're not going to be, so don't stress out about it.

As far as how much space to leave between arcs? That's up to you. I have to admit the arc units that I have done with a half-inch gap between the arcs have worked out "smoother" than the one I did with an inch and a half between.

I have a secret to tell you. As I was quilting arcs on Cranky Witch, I decided I didn't like using my pinkie measurement - the arcs were a bit farther apart than I wanted them to be. When I get to the end of an arc, I do a backstitch and then travel through the batting to my next beginning. So I started making the arcs whereever the needle naturally popped back up. Guess what, I can do that. All of these arcs are going to be unevenly spaced. That's okay.

How many arcs to make in each fan unit? That's up to you. I often like five - it's just a good number of them. But with Halloween Faces I decided I had to make more than that otherwise it would be too clunky and too much the same size as each face - so I did seven. And I decided on seven again for Cranky Witch.

You can keep marking for awhile, we won't worry about eyeballing it just yet if you don't want to. Please please please keep in mind what our goal is. We are not striving for perfection. We are having fun.

It's also okay if you forget to make five arcs and only do four. You can either leave it be or the next time you're in that area you can make six arcs to make that spot tall again.

Don't stress. Have fun. Start going. By the time you've made a few units it'll be easier, trust me.

I sometimes get carried away with the quilting and lose track of where exactly I am. For instance, while I was quilting fans I forgot that I'd only done five arcs instead of seven. See where there's a little valley in between the arc units:

It's not a problem. I could leave it exactly this way and all the future fans would dip in that same place OR when I reached that spot again I could do nine arcs OR I could go back and fill in that area with partial arcs like so:

Whatever method you choose, it'll look great.

Which Way To Do The Fandango?

I want to give ya'all an idea of what direction you could go with the fans. I used the paint program on my computer for the first time and was pleased with how wobbly my results look. I look at it and think it looks really fun. See how different all the fans look, yet the overall appearance is pleasing. It'll be that way with your quilt too.

This first pattern is my favorite. Okay, it's boring, but it's also - soothing. No surprises, just keep making one after another. It'll also probably draw less attn to the quilting than the other two methods I've illustrated. Notice in all the examples how some of the fans are incomplete. They hit the end of the quilt and just stop. They run into another fan unit and stop. That's how it works. All examples start in the lower right corner.

1. Rows of Fans: Start in a lower corner and go across. Notice that fans end where they end with no planning. The next row is worked right on top of that going in the same direction. Etc.
(Not recommended for a large quilt - you get too much bulk.)

2. Spiral fans: Start in the lower corner and work your way around and around and around and around. In other words, go all the way around the outside. Once you've done that you do another go round starting in the same corner as the first time thru (in this case, the right). You need REALLY good basting for this method because you are working from the outside to the inside.

3. Diagonal fans: In this one you work in from two opposite directions - in this picture the lower right and the upper left. You essentially go over and up, over and up.

Getting To The End Of The Quilt:

Quilting arcs a half-inch apart helps to make them smoother. Still, by the time I got to the top of this little (23" x 21") quilt, there was a good 1 1/2" difference between the top of the highest fan unit in this row and the lowest fan unit. Here's a pic where I have those two points marked. See, one way high, one way low. And it doesn't matter. Fill in the area with partial fans until you have the whole quilt covered.

I know I'm a broken record on this point, but you just have to relax and enjoy the process of doing these free-hand fans. They WILL look great when you are done. And the more you do these, the better they will look. Practice, practice, practice.

Fan Gallery:

No-el Quilting detail:
Border quilted with freehand fans using regular quilting thread!
Letters are quilted "in the ditch"!

Blue & White Houses:

I intended to quilt each of the blocks differently, but soon realized it was too busy. I left the quilted clam shells on one roof, ripped out the rest, and switched to fans. These were done in the row method, six arc fans spaced about 1 1/4" apart, with black perle cotton.

Little Pink Houses:

Little Pink Houses is quilted in rows with black perle. There are five arcs in each unit, spaced 1/2" apart.

Halloween Faces:

Halloween Faces is quilted with fans laid row by row in regular black quilting thread. Thicker thread would have obscured the faces, and I wanted to show those off.

Shells:

Shells is quilted in the spiral pattern with black perle cotton. The second pic shows where they all smash together in the middle.

Patriotic Crazy & Happy 4th of July:

In Patriotic Crazy just the border is quilted in fans and the middle bit is quilted in the ditch using white quilting thread. Happy 4th of July is quilted in fans row by row with white perle cotton.