Cindy Needham has a great tutorial on adjusting your sewing machine tension in her most recent Newsletter.

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I practiced meandering or stippling on 4 practice blocks, and them was brave enough to try it on a twin size quilt. I figured that was the only way to really learn. It's far, far from perfect, but it turned out fairly well considering it was the first time on a full size quilt. I would like to learn QAYG as it would make FM a lot easier I'm sure.

Which book of Harriet's are you referring to?

Gday, thanks for this site, is a very good tutorial. I get to nervous to do fmq, but i will get there. I just havn't got the time to do on a regular basis. So at the moment i get around my quilts either in the ditch or with the walking foot. :)

Thanks for the link. Good videos with helpful tips. I'm off to practise practise practise.

I made 5 quilts for charity and practiced on them. The last one looks the best. You could also do a sampler type quilt and try different motifs (sp) on each block. I just finished a quilt with FM roses and took into my LQS where I bought the fabric and she told me that if I had paid a LA to do what I did, I would have paid over $200. So its worth quilting your own IMO.

Put on some nice music, and don't forget to breathe :)

It took me about 20 sewing hours to really get the feel of it and to get comfortable with it. And I only practiced a couple of hours each session and I took a break every 30 minutes. I find that if I FMQ longer than that, I start to tense up, so I still go by that guideline.

"Heirloom Machine Quilting" is the book by Harriet's that I have.

I started with stippling and meandering. Then with chalk I drew simple designs - stars, heats, butterflies, flowers. I use baby quilts to do practicing on. I've even used the preprogrammed embroidery stitches to FMQ with. Try them out on a practice piece first. I have some hot pads that look pretty wild.