MadQuilter

Meissner's at the main store in Sacramento. It's a whole series of 8 classes that starts with basic straight stitch quilting and the walking foot. It is 2 Thursdays in September, October, November, and December - all dedicated to quilting. The instructor is Florence Fong. First class is this Thursday.

tjradj

I love FMQ. One tip that I got from leah Day's web site was to use a "supreme slider." It's a fantastic tool.. It's a sheet about 8 1/2" x 11" of a rubbery material that has a teflon coating on top. The rubbery side clings to your machine's flatbed and the teflon side is under your fabric. There is even a premade hole for the needle to go through. This little gadget reduces the friction from the weight of your quilt. It was a life saver for me.
That, and practise. For practise, I use small quilt sandwiches that I make out of scrap. Then I just practise writing my name with thread! after a while the shoulders relax because after all, it's only my name - how intimidating can that be! My avatar is a quilt that I did micro stippling in every block on the cream part. The leaf and heart are minimally stitched.

Dee

I do very little free motion. The feathers are beautiful, but haven't ventured into that yet.

Monika

I would love to hear how that is. I almost signed up for it myself!

yellowsnow55

Forgot to mention the supreme slider, great help to me

:thumbup:

maryjoan

I am a straight line quilter and use various stitches to stitch in the ditch. For example, the scallop stitch creates a great quilted look when the quilt is complete. I think the large quilting machines are great, but I prefer the quilted, coverlet look. If you are new at quilting, make a kid's quilt in squares using a kid's pattern with a solid square in between. It's a great start! Make one large enough, 40 inches by 50, so that the child can use it in day care, napping, and wrapping up. The double stitching, basic and quilting, creates a LASTING one until the child grows out of it. God bless your new adventure. Joan

laurac

i'm pretty new and self taught. i enjoy hand quilting and like to stencil on designs or draw them myself.

Quiltin'Lady

Most of the time, I just bow to the inevitable and SID everywhere. But every so often I get a wild hair and do some simple stippling.

As long as I remember to wear my quilter's gloves (the ones with the little sticky dots on the palm-sides), to look ahead of where I'm stitching (rather than where the needle is), and to move the foot pedal a tiny bit faster than I might think comfortable for me -- it works! Just be sure that there's nothing for your quilt to snag on, that you've got good ergonomics (neck and shoulders relaxed, forearms level, jaw unclenched). Then you can just let your mind "zone out" -- i.e., do a "zen" thing and get in touch with the stitching. Sounds kooky, but it helps!

And most of all -- don't sweat it. It's just a quilt after all! :lol:

Oh, yeah -- that slick slider doohicky is fabulous!! Well worth the money..........

shrldunn.

I like to do my own quilting so I can say I did that quilt! So I have been anchoring the quilt with some SID and then meandering. As a result, I have had to have my Elna 6003 worked on and the timing fixed three times in about 10 months. As a result, I've decided to do only SID on my Elna using the walking foot. I think I'll look for an older machine on which the feed dogs will lower so I don't risk messing up my good machine any more. I think I'll look for an older machine that does straight stiches, will use a darning foot and is not computerized. This is my plan now. Who knows what I'll do a month or two down the road? I ordered the pattern for the home-built quilting table. Now I just need to get DH to built it and to convince him I need a mid or long arm machine. I'll sleep on these ideas a few nights and then see what happens.

RST

Free motion improv -- you could not pay me to stitch in the ditch.

RST