Free Motion Quilting Practice - Day 4

Day 4 of FMQ (Free Motion Quilting) practice.

I'm finding that there are definitely two different kinds of FMQ.  I cannot remember what HH (Harriet Hargrave) called them, or if she had a name, but there's a difference between FMQ when you follow lines and when you just doodle it out of your head.

Up until this point, I've been just doodling out of my head, and I have to say that I'm getting pretty fair at that.

Following the lines is another story!

I can see that my stitches are becoming more consistent in the areas where I'm just doodling (the exercises that HH recommends), but when I do the other parts (where I'm following lines) it's still not there.  HH kept reassuring us that one day during practice, we would have an "Aha!" moment.  I'm still waiting, lol.

As I said before, I'm going to keep the pieces until I'm all finished (and a few of them, I'll probably keep forever) so that I can see the progress I'm making.  Plus, I'm making myself make see the good.  There is some good among the not so good, so I need to focus on that.

I was also able to pick up a #24 foot for my Bernina yesterday.  (Thanks, Angie!)  I LOVE it!  I feel like I can see what I'm doing a little better.

I also worked on seam allowance.

HH strives for a scant ¼" seam.  This means a few threads smaller than ¼".  Since the feet that most of us use on our machines are made to help you achieve the ¼" seam, they don't work so well for a scant ¼".

HH suggests (on a Bernina) using a #13 foot (which is the straight seam foot) with the seam guide attached to but your seam up against (kind of like the #57 foot).

It looks a little strange, and it's awkward because I've been using the #37 foot (a quarter inch foot without a guard) and so it's awkward to feed the fabric up against that edge.  Also, that long bar that you see sticking out to the left?  That needs to be cut off because it's in the way.

I worked with it and got it set so my seams came out perfect!

You can see here that the middle strip is EXACTLY 1½".  COOL!  The edges were just a hair wider than they needed to be, so I shaved them off, then my strip set was EXACTLY 5" wide.

COOL!!!!!

And, it's starched "flat and stiff as a board!"  (You'd be proud, HH!)

So, those were some of my adventures today in Hargrave Land.

What did you do today?