Mama879

I will be doing the quilting by hand soon just want to play with the machine right now. Well I'm looking for different ways or patterns to quilt with my machine. I have seen flowers and circles. Is there some place I can look and learn how these are done? Is there a special quilt pattern for different blocks. What looks best with what? Am I making sense?
By the way I only have a little singer plain Jane machine to play with.
I made a spinning wheel quilt sewing machine cover it has 12 blocks all with blue and white in them. I have done 3 blocks with a square starting at the outside then moving in. Like a square inside a square and another inside that. I'm also using a dk blue thread and it is nice but it does not really grab me. Any ideas?

Zinda

Many quilters use a doodle pad for freehand patterns. Anything that you can make a continuous line with counts. Practice, practice, practice. The library would be a good source for books. Look at other quilts to see what you like.

Cass62

Here are a couple of links to videos which will go through the basic steps for machine quilting with a walking foot, and free motion machine quilting. There is a lot of information out there and you can also take online classes at Craftsy.com. Like Zinda said, practice, practice, practice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiJllrOdrZ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nz0QwNv1AA

Painiacs

Good luck!!

DOTTYMO

Those patterns look so easy on others quilts. You need to practise and personally I would recommend using the walking foot to do straight line to stabilise the gentle curves from a point to point on say a square . Then drop feed dogs put on darning foot and try on practise paper.

soccertxi

http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

Leah Day's site is a great starting place. PLENTY of designs. I love to doodle on a white erase board before I put needle to fabric. Keep your elbows up...you need to teach your arms the motion. If you put down your wrists, you are teaching your hands.

ManiacQuilter2

How about taking a machine quilting class at your LQS?? That is what I did over 25 years ago from Harriet Hargrave. Learned so much from her. There is something you just can't learn from a video.

Mama879

Thanks ladies for all the info. I have been watching so many video's and learning so much. I would love to take a class but we do not have any quilting stores around here. I'm really sad about that to. I was told to doodle to. I was also told to drop the feed dogs and a darning foot. Have to order them on line as no one has feets in there stores any more.