My guild has a LA. I quilt on my home machine because I am rather disabled. In either case, my guild sisters recommend making a quilt sandwich and just experimenting. The results can be cut into pot holders. I have made 500 quilts now, almost all of them FMQ. One guild sister recommends trying out new patterns with marker pens on newspaper, full size, to get the feel of the motion.

Hi -- I've been quilting just a few months. I've made about 3 quilts and the first one was a SID, and the last two were stippled. Basically, the quilts I've made are for my DGDs and a neighbor as a surprise, so they don't really care about the quality of the FMQing...they just like the fabric. I told my neighbor it was my first quilt and so she was very surprised and grateful to have it.

Anyway, these are lap quilts and they make good practice pieces. When you are done, you have something to give and you can say, it's not perfect, but it's made with love.

I've found that on this last quilt, my FMQ/stippling is getting better and better. Just need to learn what my machine likes best tension wise and also controlling the foot pedal speed. My machine is a Singer 301A - and oldie but goodie - and the foot pedal gets hot, so I have to take breaks. That helps too. I got this last one done in one night so I was pretty proud of myself. ;-O

'Practicing' on items that you can say you're learning on and still be proud of. Not many people want to just jump in and 'just do it' but that's what works for me.

I was breaking thread often. I switched my spool to a vertical thread holder instead of the horizontal one on the top of the machine and the thread stopped breaking. Open toed foot helped. I make mostly charity quilts and put big borders on them and then fm on the borders so I don't have a ton of fabric in the harp. This keeps you in a narrow strip and goes fast :-)