Covered in Threadmalaka’s adventure in sewing

Wow, I feel liberated.  In my quilting class, the only method of quilting we were taught is to stitch in the ditch, which basically means straight lines, only.  By my third quilt, I felt extremely limited, so I decided to teach myself how to free-motion quilt.

Free-motion quilting uses a different presser foot, the darning foot, which I bought awhile back but have been too scared to even take out of the package!  After reading about free-motion quilting for too long, I finally took that baby out and screwed her in.

Then I read this article about how a sewing machine platform is essential to this process, and how to make it.  Because my handy husband was starved for a project (and on a week long vacation from work), he whipped it out without much thought.

I found the ugliest piece of cotton fabric from my stash (which just happened to be Christmas fabric) and made a quilt sandwich to practice on.  Then I went to town, buzzing around.  The correct way to free-motion quilt is to lower the feed dogs, which I did, but then I had problems moving the fabric.  I think I need quilting gloves which will help my hands grip the fabric and move it around.  I read somewhere that a lot of new quilters have had more success with their feed dogs up, so I gave it a shot.  I liked them up much better! I felt like I had more control, which doesn’t seem right.. but after a few minutes I was able to trace the pattern in the fabric pretty well!

This was SO MUCH FUN!!  Much more fun than just straight-lined stitching in the ditch.  I have a tendency to put the pedal to the metal (err.. carpet) which makes my stitching too short, so I need to practice regulating that.  I thought about wedging something under my pedal so I won’t be able to go too fast.

Another fear, overcome!  I feel like I’m learning so much that I can’t make the quilts fast enough to implement all my new tricks!