Maine’s 1st Quilt – Learning Free Motion

Description

I don’t have a long arm machine so all work has been done on my Bernina 790. The thought of learning free motion quilting was daunting and I procrastinated. I’m not going to say that it came naturally to me, because it didn’t – I had this fear of messing up a project on which I had worked so hard. For the last several weeks I’ve been looking for another alternative – surly there was some other technique that would look just as good. Alas, I could find nothing. I kept watching Amanda’s video biting off my nails and realized that I was going to run out of time if I didn’t get busy. Finally, I told myself that I was not quilting an entire quilt, but just one little square – how bad can I mess it up? After finishing the first square – it didn’t look too bad, I gained confidence and was willing to venture out to other designs. Once I got the feel of free-motion work, the fabric sometimes seemed difficult to slide on flatbed of the machine. Made a quick trip to the store and bought a removable sheet that adheres to the flatbed reducing the friction, that did the trick.  I used serval methods and tools on this part of the quilt. In addition to free motion work I used the patchwork foot (97D) for some of the straight lines and open toe embroidery foot  for stitching in the ditch and incorporating some designs built into my 790. Once I got past my fear of free-motion quilting I began to enjoy the process and am looking forward these final steps to complete my quilt.