I have one of those adjustable plastic tables that are popping up everywhere. I am going to set that up this evening.
I paperpieced a block for a quilt I'm doing. The block is 3" square. The 4 nine-patches that are in the block are each 1/2" with 3 tiny stripes of color in between each 9-patch. It took 8 hours to make that one block and I loved every minute of it.
If you want to see it:
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Someone told me that if I could make that block, I could do FM.
I said making that block is the exact OPPOSITE of FM.
There is a lot of variation in free motion quilting. Some quilts are quilted with an overall meandering; in general, I am of the opinion that the quilting does not do anything to enhance the quilt. The overall pattern with a pantograph is sometimes an improvement over the meandering, but still it often doesn't do much to enhance the quilt in my eyes.
A good machine quilter will enhance the design of the top with the quilting, probably with a very simple quilting design where the top is detailed and a more elaborate pattern in larger open areas. Of course, the amount of quilting is fairly uniform across the entire quilt. This is very much how one designs the quilting when hand-quilting.
A tendency that I've noticed in the last few years is for machine quilters to quilt very heavily. In some cases, especially for wall hangings and purely decorative pieces, heavy quilting can be effective. In others, especially in quilts that are to be used as covers, it can be too much as it may make the quilt stiff and less drapeable. I think people who quilt with a long arm or other machine on a frame are more likely to overquilt, because it is easier than hand quilting or using a domestic machine without a frame.
I did quilt my "Julia's Lily" quilt very heavily; in this case, I do like the effect -- it seems to suit the piece. I definitely don't always quilt that heavily -- in fact, I seldom quilt real heavily. My "Nana's Garden" quilt is probably more typical of my machine quilting; I did a stitch-in-the ditch in the pieced strips and a stencil design in the plain blocks.
Julia > I love this thread - it demonstrates that we all have different
(blush!) Thanks, Heidi. I am a bit embarrassed- I was afraid to drop the feed dogs for many years. I was MQing with them up. Then Pat on her hill and Polly ganged up on me and made me try it with the feeddogs down. That was my first attempt- it was so much fun and so liberating that I went crazy. The stitches are all over the place in size and I got stuck and stitched in place more than a few times. But it was fun and it got me past the fear. And it got me past the thirty hours rule! (You do realize it's a preprinted panel that I added borders and then quilted.)
I just returned from the quilt show in Mt. Dora FL. They had a special category for quilts done on a long-arm. There were only a few done with a pantograph. Most of the quilts had wonderful, open quilting that really enhanced the quilts. The guild had marked quilts with a green dot to signify that it was worthwhile to look at the back as well. Often the quilting was more visible on the back, and some of them had pieced backs or were reversible. DH took several pictures of just part of the quilting designs for inspiration!
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