Try your quilting out on some charity quilts.

The primary purpose of the quilting stitches is to hold the quilt together. If your quilting does that, it has served its purpose. Let your piecing, your choice of fabrics, and your design selections speak for you. Even the adults in your family will love what you make. The quilting itself will improve over time (and is probably already better than you think it is).

Make sure that you have the right machine for the job. I have just purchased a Juki TL98 machine from my friend who had it sitting in her sewing room gathering dust as she bought a long arm. The machine is amazing and perfect for what I do. It's fast powerful and has wonderful stitches and a great thread cutter. In the last two days, I have quilted a large single quilt and a large crib quilt. There's been no jamming, growling breaking thread and sore arms from trying to force my old machine to quilt. My quilt tops were stacking up because machine quilting was so frustrating, hard and slow for me. I just can't believe the difference this machine has made.

I highly recommend quilting gloves, a walking foot if you want the feed dogs to help, and SPACE. Heavy quilts hanging off sides and backs (not to mention cats sitting on them) make it more difficult. I did SID (stitch in the ditch) for years on many quilts. For all my imperfections I'd still rather quilt my own. I do rip out the lines I can't live with.

It's worthwhile to make tops even if they wait a long time to get quilted. My sister and I have made tops and quilts for many years, but it's only recently that I bought a relatively low-cost used frame quilting system. Now I am happy I have all these tops ready to quilt! I quilted one of my sister's queen-sized tops as a Christmas present for our brother in just one week! My sister has physical and cognitive disabilities, so all of her quilt tops are far from perfect. This quilt was the first one I did on my longarm setup, and my quilting of it was far from perfect. But, when the quilt was done, it looked spectacular anyway!

In my case, I could do sit-down quilting on my DSM but I really did not enjoy it. Never thought I would be able to have a frame quilting setup. I love the one I have but, if I didn't have enough space/money for it, I would have done well to have invested in one of the less expensive options years ago. There are kits available to make-your-own quilting frame to sit on a table, there is the Easy Quilt frame, etc. There are lots of alternatives to quilting on a standard DSM setup. Check Youtube and Google websites for ideas.

Great video... That gal is a hoot...great info, I will be watching her again. Thank you very much

Judy in Phx, AZ

When I started quilting I only did stitch-in-the-ditch. It was easy and didn't require me to think or be creative. Somethimes I still sitd because it reflects the quilt pattern on the back of the quilt.

We're our own worst critics. I took a FMQ three hour class at a local fabric store and thought my efforts were extremely amateurish; the other students in the class oohed and aahed over them, as I did with theirs. Some of my efforts, if they were on a quilt with a print, would be passable. Make up some 15" muslin quilt sandwiches and practice practice practice.

Well, I just jumped right in and decided that I was going to quilt and learn as I went. My first quilt was the one that had all the grandmother's pillow cases. The stitches are not all even (but I tried) and it took me almost 2 years but in the meantime, I would create other quilts, machine in the ditch with a number of them; stitched in the ditch AND hand quilted some of the blocks on each of those. My motto is "I am having so much fun learning and doing the best I can!" - that works for me. I made 8 Christmas runners and hand-quilted all of them and NOT one person complained about a stitch too big or a stitch too small - they just loved the fact that I took the time to make them a gift by hand. So, don't be paralyzed - life is too too too short to spend it that way. Enjoy the fun and the challenge of quilting.