Eeeek! I've just been on line to place an order at my local sewing machine shop. The shop is not that far away really but I never seem to manage to get there in person, so online order it had to be! I ordered a new lightbulb for my machine (it went after only 6 months of fairly light use - is that normal?) and ended up (FINALLY) ordering a free motion foot too! Eeek! That means that once it arrives I will actually have to have a try at FMQ! Time to start reading all the posts on here about it and do my research!

I am not sure if it's normal or not, but it sure could be. Sometimes those light bulbs are bad from the beginning. Good luck with your FMQ. I order most of my sewing attachments from my store too. Good luck!! :D

I don't know about the light bulb in your machine. I had my 180 for several years and the bulb never burnt out and that machine was constantly in use...

And when you get free motion down, I'll send you my quilts to do :roll: :roll:

My guess is that the light bulb had to have had a defective filament in it - I had a viking for 20 years and when I gave it to my daughter - it still had the first light bulb in it!!

I have just started to seriously work with free motion quilting. I can do OK on small stuff but do not have the nerve yet to try something big. Good luck with your new foot.

I love fm quilting. Hope you will to. Just remember, practice practice practice. You're going to do great.

oh Kitty! How wonderful! I just know you are going to enjoy doing the free motion quilting. It is kind of like learning anything new. Just give yourself permission to play at it at first. Kids never dread or get scared when they learn something new. They think it is a game!

I bought this book on line to learn machine quilting and I like it very much. It talks about threads, types of quiting and other really good information to get started. It is called, "Machine Quilting Solutions", by Christine Maraccini. I like it very much. (I couldn't get into a class because it filled up in hours of opening sign-up) But, I found out the book they were using and got it. Mine came from overstock . com and I paid less than the girls in the class did for thiers.

I know one of the gals here was doing some free motion quilting and she had commented in just a week of working with it how she had gotten so much better. So it takes a little practice. That's all.

How exciting for you! Just RELAX and don't put sooo much pressure on yourself. You scare yourself too much. Relax, breath and have fun...afterall...its not life saving surgery!! :lol: :lol:

Oooh, thanks for all the encouragement everyone! Am looking forward to having a go!

Mary...you will have such fun, I made up about 18" sandwiches, just use any old bits of fabric, like an old sheet and scraps of wadding. If you sew a grid pattern every 6" then you can 'play' at filling in each section with different patterns, then when they are full you have a nice mat for the cats :D

Great idea Izy, thanks!