If you want to do QAYG (quilt as you go) technique, MotherDuck from Qld, Australia has a good tutorial on this website. I haven't used QAYG yet but I know that a lot of others have. I am not much good at FMQ as I do it very infrequently. I think practice is probably the answer.

I suggest that you extend your quilting table to accomidate the larger amount of fabric and have a lot of patience and try not to put a lot of pressure on yourself to finish the quilt in a certain amount of time. Take your time, relax and enjoy what you are doing and in time you will become more proficient at it and you will zip through the quilting process.

Thanks for sharing.

I felt the same way, so I sold my jetski, and bought a Mega Quilter & frame off craiglist. I quilt my own now.

I don't remember what thread it is, but there actually I think a couple of them that shows you how to make an extension for your machine and turn your machine so that the right hand opf the machine is facing you. I want to try that sometime.

I don't know how practical this would be for you, but maybe you have a friend that can quilt a quilt for you and in exchange, you could babysit, clean her house, wash her car, etc. Just a thought. Or you could even tie your quilts if you like the way they look tied.

You know the feeddogs don't drop on my 20 plus year old machine, Mine maching has a darning plate that you place over the feed dogs, I did a search just random on darning plates and they are available for many machines. Most are less than 10 bucks.

Thanks, I may just order them from Leah's site as she is very generous with her talent, the link you provided is definitly bookmarked though excellent prices on everything, thanks.

I found a LQS that provided lessons on the long arm machine. I practiced on a few quilts and then started doing my own on their machine. They rent the long arm out for $10/hr plus thread if you use theirs. You may try locating a LQS that provides this service and do it yourself. There are a lot of resources online that provide designs. I also practice on my own machine so that it helps me to create designs easily on the long arm.

Hope that helps.

Diana

The perfect practice size is whatever will have you feeling good about your results. Like everything else, start small. Don't forget to post your results so we can be of help to get you going.