Originally Posted by Barb in Louisiana
I just love how adding the right border can turn an ugly duckling into a piece of art. Your quilting was wonderful. I can only believe you had already been FMQ on a regular sewing machine. Or, you are one of the fastest learners on the planet Earth. lol I will be buying a LA sometime this year. You are years ahead of me. Any suggestions you have as for my preparing for the LA will be appreciated.
GREAT JOB!!!!!
Thanks! Advice on LA prepping, try as many machines as you can to decide what feels best to you. I only tried out two. An HQ and the Innova. It only took a small test drive on the Innova for me to know it felt right. I loved the smoothness of it and the price was right.
My FMQ on my DSM left a lot ot be desired. I had a lot of trouble regulating my stitch length and getting smooth curves. I never tried anything bigger then a kids quilt (about 60" square). I never stretched my comfort zone either so mostly I did meander on FMQ and following marked lines. I did not want to fall into that trap with the LA so I wanted to do anything but meander with my first quilts. Not to say there is anything wrong with meander. I love it done small as a background filler and it is a good design for patchwork that doesn't need any extra oomph of elaborate quilting. The best advice I can give in prepping for your LA is doodle, doodle and then doodle some more on regular paper or get an erasable white board. I bought a big pad of drawing paper and spend a lot of time drawing possible quilt motifs. It is really amazing how this repetitive doodling transfers to a kind of muscle memory even though the motions of drawing and LAing is different. If you draw the design enough times it just kind of transfers naturally to LAing, at least it seems to for me.