![]() ![]() There are some designs that are perfect for beginners to get their sea legs and become accustomed to longarm machine quilting. Oh, and instead of paper you are doodling on fabric. Using a longarm feels a lot like doodling with a big pencil only you are using thread and not lead. It takes your breath away! Once that beautiful machine gets out of the box and onto your quilting frame, you might start to feel a little intimidated. I know there are some really great quilters and quilt teachers reading this blog, as well as newer quilters who are finding out what works for them.There is nothing quite like that moment when you open the box to your new APQS longarm machine. I hope these thoughts are helpful if you're on the learning curve for meandering. And every 10 or so minutes I find the area I started with and hold it up against the area I'm currently working, to see if I am loosening up too much. To counter this I try to purposely make my stitching bigger and more open as I start. ![]() My meandering, and probably most people's, tends to loosen up a bit as I go, with my curves getting bigger the longer I quilt.I could save myself a lot of ripping if I always followed this advice. If you get ahead of yourself and don't know where you are going next, STOP and take a breath and decide.If you've been stuck on meandering I invite you to spend a little time sketching, and see if the twosie-threesie thing helps at all. Whenever I get the feeling that "oh no! this wavy line won't stop!" I toss in one of these to get me off on a new direction. My own personal epiphany: when stitching, try to add twosies (two-lump units) and threesies (three-lump units) as you go to keep from getting into a crazy long wiggle.This lets you practice meandering while just moving in one general direction (to the right) instead of all over the quilt. Or you could just meander in wide (6-10") rows across the quilt, keeping the edges curvy on each row so the next row can nestle up against it. I like the way Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson plans her quilting, shown in this picture. Leah Day of the Free Motion Quilting Project talks about how she sections a quilt in this video. Make a plan before you start about how you will move across the quilt.That way when you stitch the adjacent area the "join" between the two disappears, and it looks like one cohesive unit instead of two separate areas. Let the edges of any area you're stitching be curvy.Use a colored marker and you could reuse your sketch paper for wrapping paper! This is just like any other skill, it improves with practice. Paper is way cheaper than fabric and with meandering you have to get your brain used to figuring out where to go next while keeping the pattern curvy and consistent like you want it. If meandering is getting you down, stitch something else for a few quilts. There are easier pattern for beginners to start with, so don't feel like you have to meander right out of the gate. Keep trying! Meandering looks so simple but it really takes a fair amount of practice.I emailed her my advice (this was, ahem, ages ago), and wanted to bring the subject up here too. ![]() ![]() She said she felt like she was quilting an area and then drawing "a long lonely line" to get to the next area. (It seems like it should be so easy, right?) She asked me about keeping the pattern even, how to see where you are going across the quilt when you are working one small area at a time. Laura sort of hit a wall on meandering, which I think is a common experience when quilters first try this pattern. ![]()
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