Originally Posted by Lacelady
I got started by lots and lots of doodles with pencil and paper. It was a lot cheaper than making sandwiches of fabric and batting to practice on. I doodled large meanders, then medium ones and finally small ones. I doodled on newspapers, old envelopes, the backs of letters etc. until my hand/eye coordination was really comfortable with where to go and how not to get 'caught' in odd shapes. When I was really happy on paper, that was when I did the sandwich thing and praticed with fabric. At that point, I knew all about where to go with the pattern, so I only had to get the speed/stitch length sorted. Hope that helps.
i did the same thing...doodles while on waiting "on hold" @ work...then when i liked what i was coming up with on a regular basis, i picked up some inexpensive black fabric and varigated threads in each of my kids favorite colors and went to town with it. then i cut the quilted pieces to fit my dining room chairs and used them up as chair pads. so i had something for my effort, but really didn't care if the kids or grandkids dumped spagetti on it... and each kid liked having thier favorite color!