I started a wall hanging in Jane Sassaman's class a year ago and picked it up to finish last night. It has large appliques of sort of freestyle flowers on it. Jane uses her embroidery stitches around some of her designs and that is what I want to do. I haven't done much of that and I discovered that it was hard to maneuver around curves and keep the embroidered design even.

Do you have any advice? I know practice will help, but suggestions are welcome! Oh, it is backed with Shirt Tailor. (I think that's what it is called.) Do I need any other stabilizer?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

If you mean embroidery stitches programed on you machine, you just have to go very slow & use the needle down feature for when you have to raise the presser foot to change or alter a direction.

In fact, I set my machine to the very lowest speed it can go and hit the start/stop button rather than the foot pedal so that the stitches are consistent.

lots of start, stop, turns. Go VERY slowly

If you are using programed stitches or fancy stitches on your machine - yes embroidery stabilizer definitely helps and should be used - it will keep it from puckering. Also going slow as suggested with needle down. Not everybody can sew with the start/stop button. I do all the time and if doing something like that slow my machine down to real slow will also help regulate your stitches. The faster you go the more the stitches tend to go out of proportion. I know several in my sewing group that cannot use do that because they feel totally "out of control" if they don't use foot pedal. As Marcialb said - using the start and stop gives the machine a constant speed, which makes the stitches more even.