I started quilting this baby quilt I call Dragon Ball Baby as a gift for a Round Rock High School Graduate, in the usual way: walking foot on, not many curves, feed dogs up and fighting me every stitch. The results as you can see in the photos is okay. Not horrible, somewhat creative, following the dragon design on the fabric but still a little stilted for what I am trying to achieve. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to paint a landscape with a hairbrush or perhaps fighting a ball for fabric for my very identity.
I am quilting this with clear monofilament thread and pre wound embroidery bobbin.
I must reposition and shift the whole quilt frequently using this method if I want to go around or echo the design elements of the quilt. Using the walking foot and traditional sewing techniques works fairly well if you are mostly quilting straight lines. I use this technique and frequently try to quilt curvy lines. I call it quilt frustration.
At some point in this process I became disgusted with myself and said “This is ridiculous!” I have a machine (actually several machines) that will lower the feed dogs and have a free motion foot (or two). I have been practicing doodling free motion designs for 3 years or more (since I took that class on Free Motion Quilting and decided that not only was I NOT a natural but I actually was horrible at this particular sewing skill) and the only hope I had was to muscle train my hands to make the designs. I have all the equipment, hell, I even have a machine with a stitch regulator! (lets not discuss that fact that I am scared to use it at the moment) I decided at 10:30 in the evening in early November, I am running out of time, the baby this is for is 2 most old already and I have to get it to her in New Zealand. I am tired of trying to quilt this way, this is stupid, JUST DO IT ALREADY!
So I took off the walking foot and the standard A foot of my Viking Diamond machine. I loaded up the free motion foot, figured out how to turn on the free motion setting , quickly picked ‘floating’ vs ‘free motion spring action’ (I have no idea which is better but if I overthink it I will chicken out) and the open toe foot. I don’t remember if I practiced briefly or not but I put the quilt in position and started.
Now, my experience as a seamstress, craftswoman, and quilter have yielded mostly results that I felt were acceptable but often a tad disappointing sometime downright awful and discouraging. I can honestly say this was an exception. I was blown away by the results! Only in design/color/arrangments do I ever find such satisfying results in my work. I guess that is the payoff for staying with sewing for over 30 years. You might actually become proficient or in my case miracle of all miracles, good.
I guess I can comfortably add free motion quilting to my list of sewing and crafting skills. It was actually a stated goal of mine to achieve proficiency at quilting my own quilts above novice. Quilting my own quilts that I would be comfortable to sell and to replace the long arm service that I have paid for over the years in many of my nicer quilts. With my dearly loved and appreciated long arm quilter retiring, I was faced with the hated situation of establishing new relationships (that might or might not be satisfactory) OR establishing a new skill. Looks like the skill was the lesser of two evils AND a big punch off the goals list. That retirement was just the kick in the pants I needed. It looks like my long armer will be building houses for Habitat for Humanity and I will be quilting my own quilts. Not a bad arrangement I think.