helou

Your quilt is beautiful. I find it amazing when I show my quilts to my family and friends and they do not even look at the quilting itself but they see the whole quilt (colors, pattern etc...) You are looking at your quilting with a "magnifying glass" others will not. I would just go ahead and practice all you want. there were excellent suggestion given above.

What I use is 2 pieces of "non-adhesive shelf and drawer liner" that I cut about the size of my hand... because I did not know if I would like or even be able to quilt a big quilt with my DSM and I did not want to invest in gloves that I might use once only.... that is what I still use

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/sto...n-stone/127376

Jingle

I use garden gloves with little rubber dots on them. !.00 - 2.00 sometimes cheaper. They work very well for me. I have FMQed over 300 or so quilts.

Your quilt is beautiful, FMQ is great. Just relax or it will show in the quilting. Washing and drying the quilt when finished hides a multitude of things.

JJBlaine

I think you are off to a great start---your quilting looks much nicer than my first attempt at fmq. After my 3rd or 4th quilt, I remember how confused my mother was when she saw how excited I was when my machine quilting had reached mediocre, lol. I think when I reach "not bad", I will literally do a happy dance!

Keep up the great work!

ruby2shoes

Bravo to you, you're doing a great job of it....goodness, you should see some of the meandering attempts I've done on my quilts! I like the idea of doing a simple pattern inside your starts and then using your meander to head on over to the next star...I hate having to stop and start and will always choose the easy continuous option! Your quilt is lovely, your colours and fabric patterns terrific and your quilts will look fab once they are done. And you'll like them more and more as time goes on because they are a story to your own quilting journey and they will make you smile when reflecting about them.

QuiltnNan

I use also. I have some other gloves specifically for quilting, but prefer the garden gloves

klswift

They way we learn is by practicing. What better way than on quilts that you know will be loved and used without criticism. One of the biggest problems quilters have is that we are too hard on ourselves. The quilts are lovely and will be appreciated!

Carol in WI

Thank you ladies for the good feedback. I will definitely use some of the designs, get some garden gloves at least and adjust my speed control. I feel very encouraged by all the comments. One question I have now probably shows how naive I am about FMQ since I was switching between my 1/4 inch pressure foot (to outline the stars) and the fmq foot to do the meander. Do most of you use the fmq foot to do straight stitching or SITD?

Sephie

I almost always use my FMQ foot to do straight stitching unless all of the straight stitching is going in 1 direction (rarely) because I hate having to turn my quilt inside my 6.5in throat a million times. Since your lines are so short, I would just use the FMQ foot for that and try to stop on the points to readjust your hand position. It can be difficult to keep the line straight(er) if you stop in the middle of a line. Once it's quilted, the shrinkage will hide any minor bobbles anyway.

What is a 1/4 in pressure foot? I always use my walking foot when doing the straight lines in one direction. Recently, since I got a ruler foot, I've been loving to use a ruler to do straight lines because it's so much faster! I'm a daredevil with speed

Carol in WI

Sephie, the 1/4 pressure foot is just my guide to sew the correct distance from the seam line. I sew on a Pfaff machine that has the IDT (integrated duel feed), so it doesn't require another walking foot. I'm trying to do the outlining with the fmq foot and not too accurate at this point
Thank you for all the good suggestions!

Sephie

Ahhh just a 1/4in quilting foot then. I didn't know if the "pressure" part meant it had some kind of cool adjustable spring where you could control pressure or something. I hear the IDT is pretty great! Don't stress about accuracy and stitch length too much right now. You're doing really well and I'm sure the quilt will be beautiful once it's completed - it's already beautiful so your quilting will simply add to it's appeal