Originally Posted by Maride
I teach FMQ and I don't recommend marking. That's why it is free motion. What I tech my students is how to think your design ahead of time, practice with paper and pencil, or with fabric scraps on the machine with needle but no thread. You see the holes and can see what it will look like. I do recommend to mark straight lines. Otherwise they never come out straight. Others have given great recommendations. No matter what I suggest you test your technique before you do your quilt. Try to do it under the exact same conditions to make sure it will work for you. No technique will work for every fabric every time, so test it before you use it on your quilt.
Thanks Maride. I appreciate the advice. I am making a qayg. the type where you make the block and then sandwich and quilt each block. I am pretty new to quilting. Well honestly extremely new. It is a quilt for me so each block I keep trying different things. Just a lot of practice basically. I had a stencil that I wanted to use so I bought the pen to trace that on. I figure if I screw up too badly it is only a 14 in block and I can either just toss one or rip it out. i have only done a few blocks so far. The last few were fmq but I am having a hard time figuring out what "right" is suppose to look like. Some of my stitches are still ending up way too big. Thanks for the tips. Anything else you can suggest would be greatly appreciated