Originally Posted by
willferg
I wish you were closer, I'd give all my charity quilts to quilt, and I'd supply everything plus gratitude for your efforts. Maybe check in your area to see if you can help charity quilters by offering to quilt...
Oh! this is a fabulous idea! I like the quilting better than the piecing anyway.
Originally Posted by
JulieR
Three things...
1. Practice with scraps and no batting -- often it's the movement itself that is difficult to master, and you don't need batting to do that!
2. Practice with batting scraps that have been pieced together -- because eventually you'll do this on a real quilt anyway
3. Quit practicing and just go for it! If it doesn't look quite right, wash the quilt and then dry it on high. All sins will be forgiven, seriously.
When I try to fmq without batting, I find often the machine skips stitches (more than one machine, so it's likely my technique, but it doesn't happen with batting in place. weird. So to date, it's always had batting in place for practice.
Check... been piecing the batting.
Ran out. Again.
I know I should just go for it, I just find it funny when I want to try something new, then "fall back" to the safety zone (swirls) and do it on one quilt (or in my case, more often a smaller quilted project)
Do any of you find that even the washed worn sheets at the thrift stores are harder to pierce and a little weird for FMQ as a result? Or does it not matter because it's just practice?