Now, before I start, I have to get the "practice, practice" thing out of the way. I KNOW that practice is vital to the acquisition of any skill, and I am willing to do it. Really. I actually embrace that concept. So please don't just tell me to practice, practice.
My problem is that I am practicing, spending hours in front of the machine (Brother NS30- pretty basic) without learning anything at all from it. It is making me grumpy and downhearted. Nothing is going right, and I have no idea why. I am, as a very wise swim teacher once told me "just practicing your mistakes".
So, I make no secret of being a bit impatient, and I thought that, for me, this product
http://www.rgadesignquilts.com/store...products_id=16 looked like a really good tool. No danger of ruining something I had pieced myself, but yet the discipline of following something, rather than just meandering all over a blank sandwich. I purchased it (at a price far in excess of that quoted here, seeing as I live waaaaay down under) and I read it carefully. I kept it for a while because I felt I was not good enough at basic machine sewing (had had trouble with tension etc) and, when I eventually realised that I knew my machine and felt ready to embark on some new learning, I took it out of the packet, read the instructions, basted it (very carefully), set up some practice sandwiches to get my tension right on and, when I felt I had done as much as I needed to by way of preparation, I began.
I really was ready to make lots of mistakes. I am a beginner quilter. I understand that, but what I was not prepared for was for everything to go wrong at once. I thought that I would work along and have moments when I would see a few (of the many things necessary) go right and, in time, with practice, I would increase the number of balls I could keep in the air, so to speak.
I would first (so I thought) learn to speak and chew gum simultaneously, and then I would eventally be able to add in some extra multi-tasks until I could, one day, move the sandwich smoothly, keep the stitch length acceptable (ie somewhere on the continuum where it actaully looks like a stitch and not like a scar, and not like a piece of thread stretched across the fabric like a fairy's clothesline) I knew it would not be pretty, but I thought it would, for a few minutes out of each hour at least, offer the promise of improvements to come with, yes, practice.
So, what went wrong? Well, as advertised above, everything. I wont list them all but tension of course, was the worst. I followed the received wisdom and I experimented- dogs down and dogs up with stitch length shortened. Varied speed of the machine and of my arms. No combo produced a decent stitch unless I slowed down so much that I might as well have been hand quilting the thing. My shoulders tensed, my seam ripper glowed hot from over use, my floor filled up with unsightly worms of discarded thread. I became discouraged. I became angry. I went to bed and next day, I tried again.
With the clarity of the new day, I could see that my top tension was being ruined by me moving the sandwich. There was no other explanation. Of all the reading I did (and I read a lot) no one had a solution to offer on this. Except practice. Back to the s - u - p - e - r - s - l - o - w sewing. Didnt work much better. Fiddled with the tension wheel. From bad to worse. Changed the bobbin. Nah. Tried pushing, pulling, side to side motion. One worse than the other. Took a break. Tried again.
Now my conclusion is that, by moving the quilt (which is the whole point) I (a) stuff up the tension and (b) produce wonky lines, influenced, no doubt, by my fury at having parted with so much cash for a piece of fabric with lines printed on it.
If anyone is still reading, thank you for caring enough to get to the end. I am off to "practice" some more.