cashs_mom

I've done a considerable amount of FMQ in the past but nothing fancy, just loop do loops and meanders. I really like Angela Walters videos, but I recently took a FMQ class at my LQS and enjoyed it and learned A LOT. I recommend it if its at all possible.

ragamuffin

If you write a person's name over and over, try this. I have a brother, Lee. The "L" and then 2 "e's" are a pattern to follow easily, over and over. Then progress into other letters. This is what I found easy to do for me when I started.
Have fun.

zozee

Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks stippling and meandering aren't as easy as they look or sound.

I much prefer leaves, swirls, stars. pebbles, even feathers.

A few hints:

wear Machingers (I tried garden gloves but Machingers have better grip) --otherwise you'll have a devil a time holding onto your fabric

going faster is easier than going slower

Make several large (20x20) quilt sandwiches with ugly , solid fabric. I say "ugly" as in anything you are okay messing around on. Solid colors in a contrasting thread make it easy to see your stitches. Make the sandwiches large like this so you feel the freedom to move around and can get up a good rhythm.

Try to relax your arms instead of tighten them. Breathe, don't hold your breath.

I also like to say "one potato, two potato, three potato, four
Five potato, six potato, seven potato more" as I do swirls and such--just for rhythm.

rryder

If you’re getting lots of eyelashes, you may need to adjust your tension in addition to paying attention to machine and hand speed. Eyelashes on the back would ndicate that your top tension is too loose in relation to your bobbin tension. You can try tightening your top tension some to see if that helps. However, if tightening the top tension causes thread breakage, you may need to loosen you bobbin tension a bit rather than tightening the top.

Rob

coffeecozy

I found the easiest designs to start with were shapes that I was so used to drawing or writing that I did not need to think about what I was doing- loop de loops are like writing "e's" and "l's". Also shapes that we have doodled since we were children like little hearts and flowers seemed very easy. Stippling requires more thought so it was harder
Sometimes your hands speed up on the end of curves which will give you lashes so will need to think a bit about your speed there.
I started with little fat quarter sandwiches and found them a very comfortable size to practice on. I still keep some beside my machine to warm up on.
I found that following planned lines was very hard at first so I decided to just doodle. It was fun, I relaxed and I improved faster then.
Listen to info from lots of people. We are all different so not everything that one person swears by will work for you.

SusieQOH

There is a Youtube video from Laura (Sew Very Easy) where she demonstates making large C's all over and I tried it. It is totally do-able!

NZquilter

I just watched Laura's tutorial. Thanks, Susie! It does look very pretty and easy. I might try that one next.

Watson

The thing I learned that helped me the most when I started was to figure out what was my ideal speed and then set the pedal speed to that as a maximum, so I only had to worry about my hands. (If you have that feature on your machine.) This way you can put your pedal right down and you kno your machine isn't going to get away from you and race off.

Watson

Irishrose2

I find stippling harder that meandering. I like crossing lines. Circles were hard, straight lines were until I started ruler quilting (I just started.) I find any marked pattern difficult. I truly like free motion - in other words, go where I want. When I did some flowers in a center, I drew it on tissue paper and stitched through it. Worked better than following a pattern for me. I need to go see the 'C' video again. I remember liking it.

MarleneC

If you are on Facebook there is a woman named Jeanne Harrison who has excellent tutorials on FMQ. She also had videos on U-Tube. Machine Quilting Tutorials with Jeanne.