carmen garcia

I tried it tonight. first tried on a small piece of farbic , batting and more fabric. It looked good. So attempted bigger quilt. Stitches look long in some parts and normal on the rest. I am so frustrated. I will probably have to take it out and probably ruin all my hard work on the quilt. I'm going too bed. Too frustrated. HELP!

Maride

Hi Carmen, meandering requires a lot of practice. Don't get frustrated or give up because it didn't work this time. Try a little more on scraps before you give it another shot on a quilt. And to tell you the truth, even when you achieve a point where you feel you control it, you will still hit a day when no matter what it doesn't work. Just practice on fabrics and batting similar to your quilt and keep going. I teach free motion quilting, have made tons of quilts and sold many of them. I can say I have no problem with it...well, almost no problem. Today I was quilting and my machine sneezed and all of a sudden no matter what I do the bottom threads start showing on the top a lot. One second before it wasn't and now it does. I re-threaded the machine, changed the bobbin, even changed the needle. Had to turn off the machine and walk away. Came back a few hours later and it works fine.

Be prepared to practice a lot and to every once in a while it may not be perfect. Good luck.

katz_n_kwiltz

Carmen,
i understand your frustration, but like Maria just said it takes practice, we all werent born doing this, and it just takes time to learn the rhythms of your machine, please dont give up, we all have bad days sewing, if we are having a bad day, visit a girl friend for a while, god knows i couldnt live without mine!!
slow and steady wins the race!!
katz

caliquocat

I'm trying to learn too. I figured out, if I pick a comfortable speed, not too fast & get in a rhythm it seems to flow easier. Also, don't watch the needle, look where you want to travel next. I've picked out too short or too long of stitches lots of times, I'm getting good at it. :-)

PaperPrincess

If I read your post right, it sounds like you attempted doing a quilt after one practice sandwich. It takes a bit more practice than a single go. Moving a whole quilt is much different than moving a practice square, so you need to get your stitching down before you can move to the next step.
Gloves REALLY help a lot. You can get 'real' quilting gloves from a LQS or try garden gloves with rubber nubs from the dollar store. Really aid in controlling movement.

Zhillslady

I ahd a friend teach me via emails. She told me up front to expect 60-80 hours of practice to get where I considered myself to be doing well.

Tartan

Meandering is hard to start out because it takes time to get smooth curves, I think. I started with a pattern that had places to stop without messing up the curves. It was a C that looked like little waves all over the quilt. It gave me a place to pause, at the inner top of the C and then I went back over the curve about 1/2 in apart and on to the next one. Another good one is doing loops. The loops that make little cheerios and then on to the next one also give you a spot to pause where they cross the stitching line. Keep at it and you'll soon be doing well.