Eat Sleep Play and Giggle with FMQ

Don’t you just love Winnie the Pooh and his friends?! I do 🙂

This fun quilt panel was really helpful with helping me learn to Free-Motion Quilt (FMQ). I didn’t have to put a lot of thought into how to FMQ it, which is one of the stressful parts of finishing a quilt. You know what I mean, right? How do I finish it? Will it look good? What if it doesn’t work out the way I have it in my head?

So to help get over all that stressful thinking, I choose to use a panel that I could trace the characters.

This was very helpful for me because I am still learning to control my speed and smoothness. That is the other tricky and stressful part for me. I tried a couple different gloves to help with driving the quilt around, too. Using just my hands was not a pretty sight LOL!

These gloves work really well. My dad found them at Menards in Ohio and got my mom and I a pair 🙂 Using gloves help to push or direct the fabric more smoothly around your machine. I have also been working on stopping and repositioning my hands when the needle gets close, rather than keep going and stretching around all awkwardly. This also helps with smoothness and consistency with the stitches.

My head knows to to take my time and breath, but sometimes my hands do things differently ;p  But all in all, I am beginning to get the feel of FMQ and am continuing to practice.

And the final quilt photo…

It is such a fun and happy quilt!