quilts

[Magot]

FMQ on placemats is a good idea Shelley - watch lots of videos and sketch out ideas to practice how it all flows - once bitten by the bug you'll love it!

[Shellymoon]

Jan, do you mark the quilt pattern before you do the free motion quilting?
Do you hoop the quilt or can you do it without hooping?

I'm ready to try something new.

[bridesmom]

You don't need to hoop the quilt. You drop your feed dogs, and use a darning foot, loosen the upper tension and put your stitch length to 0 or as low as it can go. You don't have to drop the feed dogs, I know each person does it differently. You can mark a design if you want, but the easiest thing to do is just start on a practice piece by looping e's and l's, then do e,l,e,l, for a few rows, to get the hang of it. I prefer loopy or curved free motion, but my friend does straight or zigzag better. When you doodle, do you doodle curves or straight lines?? Doodle on a paper for a bit also to get yourself ready. And check out Leah Day's website, Daystyledesigns.com. She's got all sorts of tricks for learning how to do it.

[sewingmom]

Beautiful works of art.

[HeyJudee]

Great job on the quilts, Shelly. Leah has a blog and website which she has all kinds of videos for the beginner and advanced quilter to teach FMQ. Here's her start page. Hope this helps
http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.ca/p/start-here.html

[susandf]

Beautiful quilts.