bigsister63

I FMQ most of my quilts with meandering. I personally like to see the quilting piecing rather then the fancy quilting. Also large meandering keeps the quilt soft and not too stiff. I have seen quilts with such dense fancy quilting that they can stand up by themselves. Not for me!!!!! Also practice makes perfect and the trick to meandering and stippling on a quilt is to get speed right and that only takes practice. Just go for it. Also remembrer that it is a lot harder to FMQ on a large bulky quilt than small practice sandwiched piece.

danlynmartin

My instructor who was excellent taught a stop and go method of FMQ. It is excellent. You can plan where you want to to next and move to that spot and think again. I love it!

maviskw

I think I would like to hear more about this. Sounds interesting.

Grace creates

I like to try different designs and prefer to not mark. First I practice the design on paper with a pencil, crayon or marker. I know from being a teacher if the writing utensil and paper are slightly rough like newsprint the design will implant in my mind a little better. Then I practice that design on a large sandwich of muslin and batting. Last I do it on the quilt. Sometimes I skip the practicing on muslin, but feathers required such.

ctrysass2012

I usually use a large meander also. Adding stars, hearts, ect depending on the quilt & who it is for. Some friends
quilt to hymns so I thought I would try that. Turned my CD player on & got started with Elvis doing Southern Gospel! Had to turn the music off to slow down. Have fun with it! Vickie

purplefiend

Here's my latest finished quilt. I did a loopy meander. Its all done with my Viking Sapphire 875, has 10" of throat space.
Sharon

cat-on-a-mac

Is there anyone else who finds straight lines easier? When I started FMQ, I did much better with designs using short straight lines like in the picture below. It took a while before I was comfortable with curves. There's a great article at the end of September's AQS magazine, by Diane Gaudinski, about beginning FMQ. Everything she said matched my initial experiences. My favorite line from that article is "Look at the big picture, not every stitch".

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chamby

I just saw this thread. I love the responses that you all gave. This encourages me as well. I am still working on free motion quilting as well. I have always thought that I need to do something complicated before I can truly say I have free motion quilted a quilt. I feel better knowing now that is not exactly true. Thanks again for the encouragement even though this is not my post. Glad to know I can always learn something new from this community.

reneaunoel

I've done practice pieces on muslin (cut and bound, make great mug rugs!) but I still cannot wrap my head and coordination around stippling! But I did an entire large baby quilt in "bubbles"! It started out looking like a bunch of grapes and I just kept adding a grape to right and a grape to the left. When I ran out of bobbin thread, I took a break and changed "spots" on the quilt. Felt like it took forever, but the result was pretty cool. Once all the grapes merged, then I realized it was a bubbly quilting design! Sometimes, you just have to "go with the flow"!

Best bet, for any of us, relax and enjoy what you, your machine and your fabric come up with! What may start out looking "not so hot" may very well be your proudest moment in quilt design!

sewmom

Leah Day has great videos of FMQ. A lot of her designs can be enlarged to allover patterns. One of the best pieces of advice I've learned is to not watch the needle but to keep your eyes on where you are headed- just like driving. I find that this is especially true for straight lines.