FMQ ...stuck!
 

I have been practicing FMQ and most of it looks barely fair. When you started, did you take a class? I am a visual "learner"...are there any good online videos? I have watched several on YouTube, but they make it look so easy! This book sounds good...Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting by Natalia Bonner....help! ;)

Try Leah Day's class(es) on Craftsy. She is so gentle and patient. I would try (using muslin and inexpensive batting) her 'Free Motion Fillers I' first. The trick is simply practice, practice and more practice! Make yourself lots of muslin quilt sandwiches!

no lessons here they told me how to set it up and practice practice and that is all i did. it would be nice
to take lessons but we live in a really small town and no one around to teach fmq.

Leah day's is the best for learning FMQ http://www.daystyledesigns.com/365fillerdesignmain.htm

All above great suggestions. It really takes LOTS of practice, and then some. You will find your own method of what is comfortable, regarding, rolling, bunching, etc. Like Trisher said, practice, practice, and more practice.

Yes a class will help. However, it depends on the teacher and the style.

FMQ is like riding a bike. It's very hard to explain exactly how to do it. You have to listen to all the advice and just keep trying. Just like riding a bike, one day it will click and you will be able to do it. You may never be fancy stunt rider, but you'll get around town just fine.

There are many methods of marking your quilt which are a great help. Class would certainly be good, and practice, practice, practice.

thank you for the encouragement! i have been watching Leah and practicing for hours! And ya know what? Once I followed her advice to RELAX and unclench my jaw, my quilting looks MUCH better! :) I have an overachiever complex, and i think I should be able to FMQ after a short time, and should be able to do feathers, etc. Huh. Reality check. My meandering and loopy loops look much better, and considering I am using bright green thread on muslin, its not too bad for a beginner!

I haven't tried FMQ yet but I can so identify with the jaw-clenching activity! LOL

I just traced out what I wanted to do on scrap and followed them until I got the feel of it and took it from there.

Yeah, I do the same (jaw-clenching), but also tend to hold onto the handles of my long-arm with a death grip:)

As others have said practice practice practice. There is another class on Craftsy Ann Peterson. I can't remember the name, but she starts you right from the beginning and you finish a wall hanging when you are done. Here is my first piece with her. I had not done much fmq before. The only other I had done was Leah Day.

One day, you will get it. Just keep practicing. Some people learn quicker than others. But don't give up. Keep practicing on small things. You can also doodle the pattern you are trying to quilt on paper or a dry erase board. You will build a mental memory for it and it makes it alot easier to quilt. I bought a big dry erase board just for it. My mom bought a dvd to watch and it was by the pajama quilter. She is kinda fun to watch. I just spent time watching youtube videos.

I am trying FMQ for the first time also. The first try was really doomed from the go. As I keep working with it I can see I still need tons of practice. But my thrifty mind can't get around using all that fabric and thread just to dispose of so,,,, I made some into small bags and other projects using quilted fabric. I am practicing on wallets for My 3 DGDs living in Malawi, Central Africa... If the quilting isn't perfect they will still like the wallets!!

I am a self-taught quilter, and did OK with my machine quilting, but it wasn't until I took a class from Diane Gaudynski that I really learned what I should be doing, and I got so much more comfortable with FMQ after the class. Whether you take a class from a teacher in person, or on-line, I would encourage you to take a class somewhere. It does take a lot of practice though to get proficient at it.

Patti Thompson's youtube videos are good and there are some wonderful classes on craftsy. The nice thing about them is that you can go back and re-watch them. The rest is practice, practice, practice.

The class is called Beyond Basic Machine Quilting by Ann Peterson for Craftsy at craftsy.com. I have been fmq for years, but I am learning a lot from Ann! (I'm taking the class now.) I recommend it.

I agree with everyone else here...practice, practice, and practice some more!
If I had anything to add it would be to make sure you "press down firmly" with your hands while FMQ'ing as this gives you more control.

FYI, GLAD brand Press n Seal is amazing stuff! I would recommend that you use a marker that is similar in color to your chosen thread for the following idea, since I used a red permanent marker and could see a VERY faint...I repeat, VERY faint pink tint in a few places, so maybe use Crayola washable markers or something similar?

I printed out a motif I wanted to use, laid a clear cutting board from the dollar store over it, taped it down over the printed motif, then smoothed a piece of Glad Press n Seal over it and used a marker to trace the motif. Pull it off the cutting board and smooth it onto your block and stitch over it, then tear it off! I don't use this all the time, in fact I just recently used it for the first time on a quilt that was making me nuts. It works, AND it produces fantastic results! lol It also doesn't move until you pull it off, and you can do more than one block at a time and it's still in place no matter how much you move the quilt around.

LOVE this description - so true.

I like Kimmy Bruners class on craftsy, she goes through each step by showing you examples on paper then does it on a quilt. The other thing with the craftsy classes is you can watch them over and over till you get it. It makes it easier to practice when you can see someone doing it.

For me it worked to start with patterns that came naturally - meandering and stippling were easy for me right from the beginning, whereas feathers and cables and whatnot still make my head ache! My girlfriend hates stippling but loves to do little interlocking triangles (lots of short straight lines) as that is what comes naturally to her. If there is some pattern that you have found yourself repeatedly doodling over the years while on the phone, or on your notebooks in highschool, try doing that for your FMQ. There is a huge amount of muscle memory at work here, and if your brain already has a pattern learned it will make mastering the speed/hand motion coordination much easier. Not to mention that a pattern you have been doodling for years probably already appeals to you at some level, and will therefore look nice even if quilted imperfectly!

I am glad that unclenching your jaw has helped! (I have to work at dropping my shoulders...)

Alison

I watched a TON of Leah Day's videos and I did my practicing on potholders and place mats! I'm not great at FMQ but it doesn't terrify me anymore either. I still need a LOT of practice before I would do it on an "important" quilt, but quilts that are just for me are perfect for practicing on. I even managed to FMQ a king size quilt! (And I don't have a longarm machine....yet)

A tip that helped me a lot - make sure you have good support for your quilt as you're working. If too much of your quilt is hanging off the table it can pull itself along faster than you want it to and it's harder to control. Grippy quilting gloves helped me quite a bit, too.

I love free motion when I get started. It always takes me a time to start. I think practise is one thing you need but like hand quilting somebody who encourages and does not critise. If you make a mistake repeat it a few times to make it part of the pattern. I also refuse to undo unless it is absolutely terrible.

Practice, practice, practice works, but it really did help me to take a hands on class on FMQ. This was some years ago, and it was taught by a well known quilter in a nearby LQS one afternoon, something like 4 hours. She helped me to overcome the fear of making feathers by FMQ. We took turns on the two longarm quilters in the store, and it was well worth the time and money. I have seen FMQ classes (either half or full day) being offered the day before a quilt/sew expo starts. This may be worth investigating the next time an expo is scheduled at a nearby convention center, etc.

I was just going to post that link! I even use it for Longarm ideas. It is a fantastic resource.

Just jump in and go for it!! My 12 year old son occasionally watches the Leah Day craftsy classes on my ipad with me and he chose the "circuit board" for his bed quilt that I'm working on. After a small practive block I decided to just go for it...

Sure, not every junction is exactly 90 degrees, not every stich in the ditch is exactly in the ditch, not every travel stitch is travelling the correct path, but there is sooo much that looks good and we (*I*) have to focus on what is right and that is 99% of it and my son LOVES it. I'm almost done completely, just some more quilting for borders and in the smaller squares.

I use parchment paper like you use in baking to draw a pattern on and then pin it on the quilt - I work in sections - and follow that. The parchment paper rips away from the stitching fairly easily and you can see through it to trace the pattern. I have used tissue paper as well like you use in gift wrapping but the parchment paper is a little stronger. Gloves with grippies help me too. You can buy quilting gloves but garden gloves with grippies on them are cheaper and work well too. I use a Frixon pen for tracing the pattern on the parchment paper so if any ink comes off on the thread then it easily is ironed and washed away. I find that by tracing the pattern like I would sew it helps get my mind in the right motion sequence and when I go to sew it it is already familiar.

Just attended an heirloom feathers (and background fillers) class taught by Cindy Needham at the Augusta Maine show. It was inspiring and I started to get the gist of the feathers much better than my many previous attempts. Cindy also has a Craftsy class online. If you like to learn from books I think Harriett Hargrave is the best. As we can see there are a huge number of resources to learn. The key to it a ll is the practice.

No problem on my longarm, but when I'm using my domestic machine, I can't do it unless I'm using quilting gloves. They give you more control and grip on the fabric. DON'T FORGET TO RELAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep practicing! The average rule of thumb is about 8 hours of practice before you begin to learn. Your fingers and your brain have to learn to work together. Once it "sinks in" you will never forget.

www.theinboxjaunt.com has a lot of FMQ tutorials that are free. She shows a design and then stitch by stitch how to do them. The patterns are broken down to the base components. My FMQ has improved a great deal. She puts a new tutorial up every Tuesday and all of the past ones are available under tutorials.

Vera, theinboxjaunt website apparently isn't working because I tried it twice and didn't get it. Sounds interesting, though.

My first FMQ was on a bag we were making in a class. I wanted the bottom quilted, so I just started making loop-de-loops and was quite pleased with it. I think I practiced for all of 2 minutes. I still like the bottom of that bag, and now I have been doing leaves in the borders. One leaf points to the left; the next one to the right. Fun. Most of my quilts are loop-do-loops or back and forth lines to fill in a space.

As for quilting gloves, I couldn't do this without them, but you don't have to spend a lot of money on them until you are sure you like this process. I started with Latex Gloves: a box of 100 costs a buck or two. And it doesn't matter if they have holes in them, just as long as you have "sticky fingers". LOL They are even more comfortable after the hand part is mostly gone. Just be sure to wash your hands well after using them, as bacteria builds up inside them after a while. I was surprised to hear that you need to wash your hands after you take gloves off, but ask your doctor friends about that.

Leah Day is the greatest inspiration, I didn't want to be wasteful, so I made up about 50 !0" sandwiches with insulbrite in them, and later made them into potholders, and they went out as X-mas gifts. I got much better in all these sandwiches.
It was a lot of fun, also.

After a lot of clicking back and forth, I finally realized the original link is missing the word "the" even though "the" shows in the original post.

Try this one: http://theinboxjaunt.com/

:)

I got into theinboxjaunt, but couldn't get any of their tutorials to play. Then I went into www.daystyledesigns.com and found those tutorial work. Watched several, of which I will certainly try some. The section in which I found this was: "Independent Free Motion Quilting Designs", and I can't find that again either. LOL

I just bot a Pfaff GrandQuilter 1200 long arm from a friend. I have made one muslin sandwich to practice on. When I get to the end I just re-roll the whole thing, change top thread color (using up all my old spools!) so I can see what I am doing and keep going. So far I haven't had any trouble with thread breaking or needle issues. Guess when it gets tooooooo thick, I'll make another "sandwich" and keep going until my confidence level allows me to do a REAL quilt.... practice practice practice...... most important HAVE FUN !!

i watched videos on u tube then like everyone else i just practiced until i was at the point where i was comfortable the way i was doing my FMQ