It's been a while. A couple of months ago I oiled my quilter and then still never quilted. Today I even needed a you tube video about how to thread the machine, it really has been that long.
(Quick lesson - free motion machine quilting is done with the machine's bottom teeth under the needle disabled, designs are made by moving the quilt in any direction. There are also quiltering machines that do just that - quilt.)
I'm not feeling confident about this, but confident enough, at least, to just start, I've never been a fan of doing a practice piece. Now the pink is finished and I don't yet know where to go from here.
Of course I've been musing as I quilted, wondering when free motion quilting started being a thing. My little green vintage Viking has the capacity to lower the feed teeth, so it was certainly possible to free motion a small quilt many years ago. If there weren't thin battings, flannel could have worked.
Of course, in the 50's, machine quilting wasn't done much at all, if ever. Now quilting is often done with two people, one who pieces, and one who professionally machine quilts with a long arm machine. And that machine is often computerized with designs ready to upload.
My quilter is not a long arm, I call it a sit-down quilter, kind of a hybrid. Small enough to fit in my sewing area. Way less expensive than a long arm quilter. Able to easily quilt larger quilts than a sewing machine.
But back to today. There was a time when I felt good about my free motion quilting, but like anything else, I'm out of practice. I really, really want to be good at this.
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