Name of Your Quilting Blog
The Free Motion Quilting Project
Blog address (such as: http://quilting.about.com)
http://www.freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/
Is your blog commercial, or for fun?
Both! Who says you can't have fun and make a living at the same time?
When did you begin blogging?
I started blogging personally in 2006, but didn't really get serious until the start of this quilting blog in August 2009.
It really requires a good idea that is both simplistic enough to post daily, but also interesting enough for people to read.
Tell Us About Your Blog
This blog is a personal journey through creating 365 new free motion quilting designs and how to actually use the designs in real quilts.
The overall focus of the blog is definitely quilting with daily free motion designs, videos, and pictures of quilts.
I also share information about the best tools and supplies for free motion quilting.
More than anything else, I want to inspire quilters to learn how to quilt their own quilts in free motion, how to get the guts to turn off the feed dogs and just QUILT!
Your Favorite Aspects of Quilting
Free Motion Quilting!
Free motion machine quilting on a domestic sewing machine to be exact.
While sewing machines have been around for more than 150 years, they're only very recently (last 40 years) being widely used to quilt quilts.
The benefits of free motion quilting are limitless:
- It's much faster than hand quilting.
- Design possibilities are endless.
- You already have a sewing machine, why not use it for quilting?!
Unfortunately free motion quilting is not exactly something machines are really designed to do.
Most quilters see a huge problem with their stitches when they drop their feed dogs and try quilting on their machine.
And what happens when your perfect, beautiful stitches suddenly get nasty?
You run for the hills! No quilter wants to ruin a quilt with ugly stitches!
So in order to get good at free motion quilting, you've got to pay your dues and put some time into practicing on charity or gift quilts.
I promise that if you take your time and quilt 1-3 full sized quilts or 6-12 baby quilts, you will see a dramatic improvement in your stitches and, by the end, you'll be ready to quilt a real quilt for yourself in free motion.
I started the blog because I'd reached this stage: I'd paid my dues, quilted my head off for 4 years, and suddenly I realized that I was bored out of my mind.
What is the most common / overused free motion quilting stitch? Stippling!
I stippled quilts (and myself) to death! By 2008 I was so sick of stippling I couldn't even see straight!
So then I did some google searches and heard about Karen McTavish and her awesome stitch called McTavishing.
This is a terrific design, but I started wondering:
How many free motion designs are there? Why don't we have as many free motion designs as we have piecing or applique designs?
Why is the domestic free motion quilting world so limited?
So I started the project as a way to share my love for free motion quilting and my burning desire for more designs with quilters from all over the world.
While I absolutely adore fabric and can cut, piece, and applique like a pro, free motion quilting is absolutely my one true love.
So come on over if you're ready to find out what this whole free motion quilting thing is all about!
Advice
- If you want to get good a quilting, quilt daily.
- Stop stressing about making every quilt perfect. Perfection does not exist past 25 inches. Actually, make that 5 inches.
- Don't be afraid of your tension dial - it was put there for a reason.
- Quilt because it makes you happy, not because you need to "finish all these damn quilts so you can buy more fabric."
- If you've never quilted before and are waiting for that perfect day when the kids are grown or you retire, stop waiting. If you want to learn how to do something, today is the day, now is the time.
- Eat. Love. Quilt. Repeat.
