I've been practicing for about a year now. I've gotten better with a meandering stipple and I feel pretty good doing that, and I bought the book Hooked on Feathers. That really helped me. I had not been doing quilts for a while...mainly sewing purses and crafts, but a friend asked me to quilt an old crib size baby quilt that her mother pieced 30 - 35 years ago, but had never put it together. Talk about scary! I felt like I was so out of practice. I'm doing the meandering stipple on it. I've been so worried that I'll mess up the delicate stitching of her mom's. So far, so good.

I have machine quilted 59 quilts and I only do FMQ and mine are no where near perfect, in fact some earlier ones look better than most recent ones. I think I have been trying to hurry and probably work too long at a time. Use to only quilt a couple of hours an evening, now I try to do it in a couple of days. I think I try to FMQ too fast and me and the speed of the machine get out of whack.

I got stippling down pretty quickly and am now working on other types. It took me a bit longer to figure out straight(ish) lines in FMQ. I find my machine does better if I have a regular foot rather than a quilting/darning foot on when trying to do FMQ and straight(ish) lines.

I am still working on my feathers. I can do small ones, but still want to learn to do bigger designs. To me, it's harder to do on a small domestic machine .... maybe if I can get a plexiglass top so that my machine is more level with a larger table top.....

I was intimidated and frustrated with FMQing until I took a class. She showed us her award winning quilts which she prefers to do on her home machine. The detail and intricate quilting designs were awesome! The best part was she took the fear out of FMQ for me and she said her FMQ bible is Harriet Hargrave"s book..which is my FMQ bible too.

Well practice and the amount you put into it is going to be such an individual thing! The one thing that helped me most was when I was at the AQS show in Nashville a few years back. I attended a seminar given by Caryl Bryer Fallert, a well known, fabulous quilter. Given the opportunity to see her quilts and actually touch them allowed me to see that my quilting, while not at her level, is just fine! Since then, I find that I am so much more relaxed that I actually do better. Unless you are entering your quilt where it will be judged by others, don't be so picky. None of us are perfect!

I have always felt that if you try not to be a perfectionist in this, you have a better chance of succeeding. One of the first times I was meandering, I crossed over a line...I was going to go back and tear it out, when I thought....is anyone but me going to know if one line crosses the other?...can I live with it....yes I can, and I moved on. I also had a hard time with the tension and sometimes the bottom thread would show...a friend told me to line up the tension as best as I could and then just put the same thread in the bobbin as I was using on the top and you couldn't tell. When I finally learned how to sandwich a quilt....holding the back fabric taut and spreading the batting and quilt top over it using lots of pins....I conquered the fabric lop over in the backing....trial and error!!

The first quilt I felt comfortable with was toward the end of my third one. Those were full quilts, though. I've done about 5 or 6 now and I still get a little nervous before hand but I practice first and then plunge in. I find it relaxing now.

Check this site out.

http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.c...&max-results=7

Here here here. ther is nothing much i hate than a dishonest free motion quilter. Unlessen it wood be a dishonets enslaven stationary quilter. Heh.

I am just beginning to enter into machine quilting. I found Leah Day online. She has a blog and does lots of tutorials. She is amazing and her tutes are so helpful. After watching her, you feel like maybe you could do it, too! Check her out.