Yesterday, I had such bad time trying to free motion quilt but I wasn’t ready to give up. I set it aside overnight & went at it today with a fresh attitude. It helped to read that a lot of other people doing the quilt-a-long were having the same problems & it wasn’t just me. What you are looking at here is a quilt that is close to half quilted!
What did I do differently than yesterday? Nothing much really. First I changed to a fresh 90/14 needle. Then I rethreaded the top thread & the bobbin. I did change my stitch length to 0.2 (the lowest my machine would let me go) though I’m not sure it makes a difference. I made a new small quilt sandwich to practice on. The first pass has some tension issues but after putting my tension all the way to 6 that was taken care of. I quilted the whole practice piece & felt pretty comfortable that everything was working.
Then I switched to my real quilt & yea, it worked. Is it perfect? By no means. I haven’t figured out how to get the really pretty loopy design you see other people do & I’ve created a few wonky curves but it is good enough for me & Im getting better as I go along. I have to start & stop a lot but have done a whole row at once a couple times which is satisfying. I’ve ripped out a lot of stitches but because I didn’t care for the pattern I was making not that the stitches were bad. My stitch length is not very even but I’ve heard that is really hard to control when free motion quilting.
I’m having a hard time controlling the excess quilt stuffed to the side while quilting but found clipping it helps. I’ve also learned when I start a new bobbin or if I’ve rethreaded everything, its worth doing a few inches on my practice piece to make sure everything is moving smoothly & then restarting on my quilt. I was starting to really enjoy it but when my shoulders started to hurt I knew it was time to set it aside for the day.
© 2005 – 2011 Kathy Lewinski & Susan Cornish
Looks great!
yeah! this looks great! and i love your new years goal. even just a few minutes a day will bring lots of crafty new things!
Looks great! I found that just doodling my curves on paper helps in terms of getting those curves you want. It kinda gets the mind in gear if you know what I mean.
So gorgeous! I wish I could sew. Can't even thread a machine. And I've tried! hehe