Nita

Now that's the best suggestion yet ...... I'll drink to that! Make mine a dry red, BTW.
Nita

dorrell ann

practice-practice-practice

JulieR

YES, I believe this, too.

As for SITD, I've been using my regular all-purpose presser foot for years and doing pretty well, but I was never great at it until I broke the front of the foot off (by accident). Now I can see where I'm going! It's a whole new world, I tell ya.

Meanwhile I can't hand quilt to save my soul. I'm off to practice :)

mpspeedy

Joanie, I am with you. I only machine quilt small stuff like wallhangings, children's quilts and Linus Quilts. Wrestling with anything larger ruins the whole experience for me. The part I hate most about making a bed size quilt is machine sewing on the binding before I finish it by hand. On queen or king size quilts I have to get my husband to help me by having him hold the sections of the quilt not yet under the machine and feed them to me. I sometimes have to set another table up behind my sewing table just to support the quilts when I am doing any kind of machine quilting.
I am just finishing up the quilting on a double bed size quilt that will be raffled off to aid our local Linus Chapter. It took me a little over a month to hand quilt and I was able to watch TV with my husband or carry on a conversation with him while I worked. Neither is possible while machine quilting.

PiecesinMn

If there is a quilt shop in your area that offers machine quilting classes I would suggest you take it. There the instructor can see what your machine can and cannot do and help you. I'm sure you would also pick up some tips that would make machine quilting less frustrating for you. Just a thought.

Grandma Libby

Well, there will be a FEW of us trying to PRACTICE up on machine quilting. I handquilted my first quilt, the whole thing, every seam of every block, but I'd like to go faster, too. I have one quilt top, a jelly roll, ready to do and I want to practice on some little "sandwiches" first. I don't want to have to have someone else QUILT all my quilts...just because I can't do one on my sewing machine. So, you all better PRAY me as I practice. Otherwise, I'll be ready to throw up my hands and quit too!

LovinMySoldier

[quote=Joanieu]The stitches look too small and look like they are all crumped together plus I am not able to keep the stitches in the ditch. It just looks too messy - I am trying it on the quilt I am making for myself.[/quot

And that's why I don't stitch in the ditch! too hard to stay where you are suppose too :) Good Luck! My fmq isn't very good either. But I am going to figure it out one day! You will get it.

cathyvv

I have a brother bc1000. The 1.5, 2.0 etc. is the stitch length. Stitch length goes low to high, 1 - 5, on my machine. So set the stitch length, sew and inch or two, reset the stitch length, sew an inch or two, and so on. Then count the number of stitches per inch.

However, if your stitches are bunching in one place, the problem is not the stitch length. Do you have your feed dogs down? When I put my feed dogs down (which is rare), I sometimes forget they're down and wonder why my fabric isn't advancing...and get teeny, tiny stitches - also known as knots.

Hope this helps. I'm pretty new to the world of quilting and the tool I know how to use best is the seam ripper.
:-D

Joanieu

Now that is something I can understand and try... lol.

Joanieu

Thanks for that suggestion and I looked and the feed dogs are up. I don't think I have put them down yet on this machine. yep, my stitch lenghts are 1.0 - 5.0 also and some of of the stitches you can not adjust - presaved I guess. I just need to practice a lot more like everyone has suggested. I don't even want to think about FMQ yet especially if I can not do the simple SID with the machine. I will learn it and then I can do some PIF and give to charity, etc (once I get some stash built up). The thing is I really love hand quilting... oh well, back to work and thanks to everyone for the positive feed back. I really love this board. HUGS to all :)