Originally Posted by candlequilter
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
No micro handles, I'll have to look into that eventually, I am terrible at the really small stuff like stippling. I like the idea of using tape and other household items as guides. Just don't want to waste $$$ on things that I won't use. I am taking a class on feathers and drawing ALOT and practicing NON STOP! I love it!