Lots of practice and reading mostly. I am not great at it, but, I am mostly concentrating on the function part before the design part. I feel this way, it needs to hold up to many washings so making sure it is stable is my concern. Then I do enjoy playing with designs. I just got the foot and westalee heavy plastic templets to learn with. On one quilt I have used four different ways of quilting. Like perhaps with the walking foot, free motion and marking a design, or a quilt design built in on my bernina. It all is done in different ways with different feet. I have watched videos, taken craftsy classes and read books.
I guess what I am trying to suggest is, be kind to yourself and just jump in and play with it. Each way takes learning how and practice. Try on maybe pot holders and work up to larger and larger projects. You will learn things as you go and it will be so fun, you won't want to stop. Honestly! It is fun when you stop being so afraid. No one is going to be critical of your work like you. Right? So be kind to yourself and have fun!
Once you start quilting, you will never look at the quilts at a quilt show the same again.
Oh one thing I forgot. I have a little notebook that I keep notes in just for the quilting. It has machine settings, thread types and other things I want to remember about my quilting techniques. That way, once I like what I see, I write it down so I can refer to it next time I am going to do it again. I don't want to waste time every quilt trying to remember what I did. Smart, huh?
Last edited by RedGarnet222; 01-23-2017 at 11:39 AM.