Onebyone

I draw feathers on the quilt top and follow the lines. I use Crayola Ultra Washable markers and white chalk for dark fabrics.

Onebyone

use some of the fancy stitches on your machine you can make the adjust the stitches just enjoy

I draw a design on the quilt top and then use decorative stitches to sew on the lines. No fmq needed for dramatic quilting.

thepolyparrot

That's a very good point. The object is to get the layers sewn together so that they can be used and loved.

thepolyparrot

When I first started getting into quilting, that's what I did - I sewed down the long seams with coordinating or contrasting thread with decorative stitches. They're really strong and for children, you want quilts to be tough. The kids still had their quilts a couple of years ago - they're 20, now.

Nebraska Quilter13365

I am in the middle of HollyAnne Knight's Free motion Quilt Academy and am learning a lot. I didn't do well in trying to learn FMQ, but this course is fantastic! (I am just a participant. No other affiliation!)

Lalla

I think one of the problems with practicing FMQ by doodling is that the process with a sewing machine is so different. So when you stop using a pen or pencil, and go to your machine, you are no longer moving the pen on the paper, you are moving the paper under the pen, so to speak. For me, the learning was better done with my sewing machine, and for a long, long time I truly loathed FMQ but desperately wanted to 'draw' with my machine. I've learned something about myself, too, and that is if I use fabric I don't like, well then I never like what I do. I know it's just practice, and I don't go and use my treasured hoard, but I do try and find fabric that I actually quite like, and I try and make things that could end up being something in their own right - it gives me the kind of incentive I need. If it's awful, fine, I'll chuck it out. But the intention is different, somehow, if at least you are working with thread and fabric that doesn't make you miserable. The other thing I learned, happily some time ago now, is that sometimes it really isn't you who is to blame! My earlier sewing machine was the thing that hated FMQ, not me!! When I switched to a straight stitch sewing machine suddenly everything started to work well. It was like graduating from drawing with a piece of chalk to drawing with a stylus pen - another whole world. I remember saying to the friend who'd recommended I try the straight stitch machine - 'if only it could do zig zag too I'd have my ideal machine'; she wisely said that the reason it does straight stitch so beautifully is exactly because it CAN'T do zig zag (or any other stitch); there is nowhere for the needle to go except straight up and down, no wiggle room for mistakes in tension. I spent a long long time just 'scribbling'; not even doodling, just messing around seeing how I really felt about what I was doing. I know I'm incredibly lucky because I love drawing, and drawing with thread is just another way to draw. If I'm honest, even after years and years, I'm not much good at feathers; please please, please, those of you who think you can't draw, try it! I think one of the most wonderful exercises you can do, which comes I think from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", that now very long-ago book, is to take someone else's simple line drawing - anything, a line drawing of a chair, or a figure, or a face, or an animal - and turn it upside down. Then copy it. You throw out all your pre-conceived notions of what it should look like, you just copy lines, judge distances between the lines, properly look at the spaces in between. When you turn your copy the right way round you will find to your amazement that actually you CAN draw; what's stopping you is your own fear of what you think you can't do. And then doing that with a sewing machine is SO much easier than trying to repeat perfect swirls or feathers. Now, of COURSE you are not going to want to FMQ your quilt with chairs or faces, but I truly believe that that is a far easier way to practice, before you go back to tackling the feathers and the swirls.

Stitchnripper

You really hit the nail on the head so to speak. The doodling on paper still doesn’t work for me and I’ve been working on my FMQ for years. Which doesn’t mean everything is a practice piece. I’ve turned out some pretty nice stuff. I don’t aspire to have it look like a computerized long arm. I can finally do one side of a feather! But nothing intricate. I am very comfortable With the process. I enjoy doing it. I am not even nearly a pro and I hope it will come to us to improve. Angela Walters and Leah Day have been my inspirations. It does take a lot of practice but I’ve been willing to do it.

Lalla

I think the getting comfortable is exactly what one is trying to do; getting inspiration from great teachers is a huge help, and. there are some great ones out there. Half a feather!! Way to go!! And you are so right not to aspire to looking like a computerised anything. I used to teach children years ago in Oxford, and often came up against a child's obsession with perfection - children can be amazingly hard on their little selves, and amazingly inflexible. My happiest moments were when I got them to understand that it's our mistakes that teach us, and that often take us along paths we didn't know existed - they'd make a terrible splotch on an otherwise 'perfect' page (this was painting and drawing, not quilting) and realise that actually, if you turned the splotch into a gorgeous flower (or whatever) you'd have created something you never even thought of when you started out. I've just made a sort of a quilt out of all my 'practicing new techniques' bits and pieces, and called it "The Learning Curve"; just for the fun of it. I'll see if I can add it to my photos on my profile page - another challenge!!

Lalla

Managed to download "The Learning Curve" on my profile page album, wonder of wonders - actually, it was really easy downloading the photos, after all my dithering!

Jshep

Onebyone - I love your idea about drawing a design on the fabric. Will have to try it.