Today’s Topic-FMQ Habits-Don’t Move Those Hands!
Happy Valentine’s Day, Quilters!
How are you progressing on your $7 (the price of a ream of paper) doodle challenge?
By now, you should have a mound of paper filled with doodles! I LOVE how doodling gets the ideas flowing–but the key is to keep doodling, even if you can’t complete 5 sheets per day.
It’s more important to doodle every day than it is to complete 5 sheets per day!
If you can’t doodle 5 pages a day, try three. If you can’t complete three, try one per day. And if you can’t finish one per day–maybe you need to think about what is really happening.
Is the problem that you don’t have time to doodle or is it that you aren’t prepared to doodle? Or, maybe you still have a mental block against doodling?
Doodling is THE fastest way to improve your free motion quilting skill.
Good Habits Make Good Quilters
We are starting 2023 on a good foot (or hand) by developing good habits for free motion quilting. Good habits are small stepping stones on the pathway to skill at free motion quilting. So far, we’ve looked at the following habits:
Good Habits:
Today, let’s focus on another small habit-when and when not to move your hands while free motion quilting. This lesson is based on observations of new quilters in my workshops. For some quilters, once they start their engines, they don’t want to stop–for any reason. (Some newbies don’t breath or blink for several minutes at a time–LOL!)
The Simple Hand Position Rule
Once you lay your hands down on your quilt (see Finding YOUR Sweet Spot) act as if your fingertips are fused in place on the quilt. Your hands and the quilt move as one-while the machine is running. In order to create a motif. move your hands and the quilt together to create the design. If the motif is large and extends beyond your fingers, STOP STITICHING and move your hands to the new space on your quilt. Once you are in position, begin stitching again.
Stop and Start
Quilting is a constant series of stops and starts.
You should not slide or walk your hands or crawl your fingers while you continue to stitch. When you try to move your hands while stitching, you do not have full control of the quilt. Your stitching line will be wonky !
Proper Sequence:
- Find sweet spot.
- Begin stitching.
- When the motif goes beyond your fingers, stop stitching.
- Move hands to a new sweet spot.
- Begin stitching.
Please Share
Do YOU feel like you have good control when you are stitching a motif on a qullt?
Have YOU ever walked your fingers like a spider while quilting?
How have YOU been storing your finished doodle sheets?
Are YOU inspired to quilt today?
We’d LOVE to hear!
May YOUR day be filled with a bite of chocolate, a dabble of doodling and a big snuggle under a cozy quilt!
Warm regards,
Lori Cupinnedy
PS…All tutorials, images and information are the property of Lori Kennedy Quilts and are intended for personal use only. Feel free to re-blog, pin or share with attribution to LKQ. For all other purposes, please contact me at Lori@LoriKennedyQuilts.com!
Check out my books on Etsy: LoriKennedyShop
PS…All tutorials, images and information are the property of Lori Kennedy Quilts and are intended for personal use only. Feel free to re-blog, pin or share with attribution to LKQ. For all other purposes, please contact me at Lori@LoriKennedyQuilts.com!
Check out my books on Etsy: LoriKennedyShop
15 comments
Clare Beth Rutila
Starts and Stops! Yes! I once had an instructor teach how to keep moving one’s hands as they quilted – geez could I make a mess.
I am keeping up with doodling while on a road trip. I punched binder holes and keep a pile of paper in a hard 3-ring binder which also provides a drawing surface.
Taking doodling to a large – 8 1/2 x 11 – format has messed with my mind a bit. I can do anything small so working larger is good … I suppose. I wasn’t seeing alot of relationship to my quilting designs until, voila … a new flower idea I’m excited to work out in thread and fabric.
Gotta go … gotta doodle.
cynthia parry
So far so good. 5 pages everyday for 8 days. It’s tougher to do than I thought! Only 92 more days to go LOL
Rita Cravath
I started the doodle challenge on Feb.7 and am using lined notebook paper that I place in a large binder so I can compare my doodles and I’m already seeing some improvement. My goal is to someday quilt feather designs on one of my quilts. I struggle getting both sides symmetrical but it’s starting to feel more natural to me. I have a Bernina Q20 and am getting braver with free motion quilting and getting past meandering and ruler work. Thanks Lori for challenging us!
Christine
You always get me motivated to practice more!
Thank you for posting, have a great Valentine’s Day!💕
Carol C Thomas
Learning to doodle.
Claire
Thanks for the encouragement. It is a learned skill, just like walking or riding a bike. Practice is key, and the more I do, the better it gets and the more fun I have. Too bad that isn’t the case with housework!!! Happy Valentines Day.
P
We all have our priorities!
Jayree A Bell-Palmer
I love your hearts. I’ll definitely work with this.
jantte billings
Have been following for awhile and got in the grove of doodling and then quilting. Not quite sure what happened but it all stopped. “Brain fog”, no motivation, so l just kept making quilt tops hoping to regain what l lost. Then opened my email one day and to my surprise, “you were back”! Thank you for all the reminders, back to doodling and quilting .
Sandy
Would you show how to doodle using a longarm machine any time in future?Would it be more difficult to doodle quilt on a longarm?
Susie
Happy Valentines Day Lori❤️
Love all the reminders. I need to doodle more for sure but will do it on a sketch pad.
Sandra Hausle
I picked up a small “white board” and markers, so I can doodle away, then erase and start again. Works for me!
Julie
An important message for new FMQ practitioners is your statement “constant series of start & stop.” Especially with a large quilt on a domestic machine, there’s simply not a lot of room within your quilting space. You can quilt a huge quilt on a tiny Featherweight, but you’re going to do it a few inches at a time. So, take a deep breath, don’t forget to blink, & enjoy the process. It’s good for you.
Julie Landrith
What a great reminder. I sometimes carry all my stress to the quilting process. I recently found myself holding the quilt with my forearms! That didn’t work so well. This is a great reminder to slow down. Quilting IS meditative for me when I do slow down. So thank you for the message today.
Meg Harmon
I have been free motion quilting now for probably about 4vyears. In the beginning it was just meandering really. Then I started learning about it through you mostly. I now treat the needle like it is my pencil and I quilt some designs that are totally my own and sometimes they are more traditional like the quilters who did it by hand. I have started doing some ruler work too. I sometimes do a lot of quilting on a quilt but other times keep it simple. When I sit down at my machine to quilt, I just try to let the quilt speak to me. Do I want the quilting to be prominent? Do I want it to emphasize the piecing or do I want it to just be whimsical all over. Sometimes I walk away and come back because I am not inspired. But one thing is certain. You were the inspiration to get me to try. I have improved, yes. My hands just sort of naturally do what you suggest above. I stop when my hands need moving. I adjust the quilt and then I go again. I have peace when I quilt. It is not up and down yo the ironing board. It is not, oh no, where is the seam ripper. I love all phases of quilting and I am in debt to you. Thank you.
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