Free motion designs on fabric
 

Someone was telling me that there is fabric that has free motion quilting designs printed on it that you can stitch on to practice. Has anyone heard of such fabric?

I've seen some on a pellon-like fabric at a LQS near me until they closed down. Sure wish I'd gotten some before they went out of business!

There are some at Erica's
http://www.ericas.com/quilting/tools/skillbuilder.htm

Also at www.keepsakequilting.com

Yup. The skillbuilders as some have given you links for. I've got two, have used one. At first I was hoping they were like the pre-printed whole cloth designs that will wash out after you've quilted them, but now I don't really care because I use it strictly as practice ... and I've practiced a lot with thread combinations - some of which clearly did not play together well. So it has turned into something pretty ugly :)

Yes I like it, yes I used the designs, yes they helped for the most part.

You can also practice going around the designs on a carefully chosen fabric if you want to practice following a line. However, IMHO it is much harder to stay on a line. Instead, most books tell you to practice drawing the pattern that you want to quilt. First you can trace it with your finger, then draw it with a pencil or chalk or whatever, then quilt it. It really does work to get that pattern into your subconscious.

I used this one when I wanted to learn FMQ. My work looked pretty bad; but I think it really helped me because when I tried FMQ on the quilt I was making, my FMQ actually looked pretty good.