kristen0112

I have no words of wisdom to give you. But you are an excellent writer. I tried not as intensely as you did to quilt on my sewing machine. Nor could I picture myself quilting the huge queen sized quilt (my first top ever made) so it was folded, placed in a box and left out in a barn for 14 years! I did small quilts baby quilts. But dreamed of doing bigger quilts. I found out you could pay people to quilt it for you! I finished my BOM and decided to make it a king sized quilt to fit my bed. I was so happy with the results that I made another large quilt (well larger than a baby blanket but really only an oversized lap quilt) sent that to a long arm quilter too. Then I realized that part of the art was doing the quilting. I found out about Baileys Home Quilter and obsessed about getting one. Decided to talk to hubby and he said go ahead. I purchased one BHQs aren't as expensive as regular quilting machines and aren't as big mine is a 17 inch model including the frame it was around $3500, something like that. There was a learning curve and some frustration and potty mouth words said, but now we get along. Now I feel as though I owe it to our pocket book to make good use of the machine and must quilt MANY quilts on it to truly make it affordable per quilt.
All that said I feel your pain.

kristen0112

I do the same thing all day long in-between calls (I work in a call center). It really does help.

quote=All Thumbs]Dear noveltyjunkie - I commend you for not giving up. Like many, I too admired what others had pieced/quilted and was scared until my DH asked me one day if I knew the stores had more fabric if I ruined some. That sort of clicked with me. But it was not until I got a pair of gloves with rubberized fingertips that I actually saw progress. And, as GGinMcKinney mentioned, I am going to try a sponge in each hand since my gloves are about to wear out. The sponges sound a whole lot cheaper than gloves.

Anyway, photo here is one of my attempts. Please try one for yourself. For hours upon hours, I traced my freehand vine with a pencil. Then I went to the machine and dared it not to do what I had been doing on paper. lol Over and over, I tried to follow my previous stitching. So, here I am approximately two years later and still learning the ins-outs of FMQ.

FMQ is fun and I know you will enjoy it too. Just play like you are in grade school art classes (er-r-r-r, do schools still have art classes?). May have dated myself there!

Good Luck.[/quote]

Bill'sBonBon

So sorry to here you are having these problems. One thing I would never do and that is go super slow,I do that only with Piecing..Your hand speed and your machine speed do have be at one with each other.. Trial and Error.. What I did and I do trace my design and follow it..I seem to do better that way.. You can put your feeddogs up only if you have different footpressure options.. on my older Kenmore I do have 3 different pressure settings.. on my new computer one Nada.. You also do better if your bed is slick and use the gloves with the nubby rubber bumps..got mine at a fleamarket and they work just as well as the ones you can order..If I don't have the gloves on I can tell the difference. I have less control.. Hope this helps you dont give up,cause when you get it right it will be so easy and fast,you will love it. BillsBonBon

azwendyg

I think everyone who free motion quilts can identify with your story! Starting out learning FMQing is HARD, but with your determination, you'll get it right eventually.

Everyone here is giving you good advice for sure, and from your story it sounds like you'll need to get that tension issue resolved before you try anything else. It does sound to me like you may have forgotten to lower your presser foot. Once in awhile, I'll forget to lower mine and it will cause the same problem. Now, mind you, I KNOW I'm supposed to lower it, sometimes I just forget, and because of the way the FMQ foot works, you can't really tell by looking at it that you haven't lowered the foot.

If that's not the problem, it may be that you need to adjust the tension on your bobbin. For my machine, the way I test the bobbin tension is to put a full bobbin in the case and run the thread through it so that it is ready to go into the machine, but instead of putting it in, I then hold it up in the air by the thread. The weight of the bobbin case and the full bobbin should almost make the bobbin case drop, unwinding the thread as it goes. If it won't drop at all when I jiggle it a little bit, I loosen the tension screw, if it slides right down, I tighten it just a bit.

Once the bobbin tension is right, then I adjust the upper tension. To get it "in the ball park" I use 2 layers of fabric and stitch over it with my regular presser foot. Then I change to my FMQ foot and drop the feed dogs. Changing the foot and dropping the feed dogs does NOT change the tension, so you should still be close at this point. Then I try stitching a fairly straight line on a small "test" quilt sandwich of similar fabric and the same batting as my quilt. I usually need to make minor adjustments to the top tension at this point to get the stitches balanced in the quilt sandwich. I test it a few more times, just doing a fairly straight line of stitching each time. It's less complicated than trying to worry about quilting any kind of pattern at this point, and it's easier to see if your stitches are balanced. When the stitching seems balanced, I try out the design I'm wanting to quilt (still on my test piece), to get a feel for what I want to quilt. After all that is satisfactory, I get the actual sandwich that I want to quilt, take a deep breath (and maybe a couple of sips from the previously recommended glass of wine), and go for it!

So, to summarize:
1. Be SURE you are lowering the presser foot.
2. Make sure your bobbin tension is OK before trying to adjust your upper tension.
3. Balance your tension with a regular foot and straight stitch first, them move to the FMQ foot and your test quilt sandwich to fine tune it.
4. Don't try complicated designs at first, just do lines and curves to get a feel for it.
5. A LITTLE wine does help! And if the FMQing isn't going well, just pour another glass and sit in front of the machine and look at it, and become one with it! If you drink enough wine, you will not care if you are actually sewing or not. (But don't try to sew if you have too much wine... things can get out of control quickly...)

I hope this all makes sense, and that you get through the initial startup woes of FMQ, because it WILL be FUN once you get the hang of it. Just don't expect too much too soon. I'm usually a pretty "quick study" and it took me months of practice on and off before I was ready to quilt on anything "good". Now, a couple of years later, I'm doing queen sized quilts and having good results and lot of fun doing it.

I'm sure we'd all love to hear how your journey in FMQing goes, so please keep us posted!

Wendy

P.S. If you are located near anyone on this board (including me) I'm sure a little one-on-one time with someone who is doing FMQing would be helpful.

Challys

I keep saying I am going to try FMQ this year, but now I am even more afraid than ever!

azwendyg

Another thing to consider...perhaps your machine doesn't like the particular kind of batting you are using??? I find FMQ is much easier with some batting than others. My favorite is "80-20" (80% cotton, 20% poly) because I like the way the quilt drapes, and it is easy to sew. I also use Warm and Natural 100% cotton, and a few varieties of poly. I hear from others on this board that bamboo batting can be troublesome...