Originally Posted by feline fanatic
The tool I find most helpful to a LA beginner is practice. I find the template tools just too pricey at this stage of the game. Besides I like the look of free hand guided. When I took delivery of my machine, I did spring for a straight edge ruler though. I think a straight ruler might be the most universal LA template.
I agree with feline here - practice is the most valuable of all the tools you can have.
I went to a 3 day longarm class thru my Gammill distrubutor and we did free motion and custom using basically easy things you would normally have at home as guides. The one I really liked was the 1 inch strip of tape that has about 1/8 or maybe 1/4 inch of foam on it and you tape it to your top and use that as a guide for your hopping foot. Great for doing cross hatch and etc. Plus you can reuse each stripe numerous times. We made a practice quilt top by having 9 squares that were 8 or 9 inches squares and 3 x 3 then in each of those squares you practice one little element like making little feathers, or the crosshatching, or taking a jar lid and stitching around it just to get comfortable making designs. Do you have micro handles for your longarm? They make alot of difference too.
Good luck,
Sherryl
Candlequilter