Are you hesitant to drop the feed dogs and machine quilt your top with anything other than straight line quilting? Well, I hope to help get you thru the initial fears and help guide you to freeing yourself to experience Free Motion Quilting! Over the next several weeks I will post steps to practice for the week – this is a process which requires practice practice PRACTICE! If you jump into quickly your brain won’t be trained to think outside the “square box” and frustrations will set in. Quilting should be fun not a dreadful task inhibiting us from taking our quilt project to the next level.

I’m a strong believer in doodling! If you can’t draw it you can’t sew it so this week’s practice is FUN and SIMPLE…make a stack of all those old spiral binders or scrap sheets of paper you don’t know what to do with and start doodling. Draw continuous loops and hearts and if you get bored move on to flowers or whatever shapes you fancy – big and small. Fill up the paper as you are listening to music or a movie or sitting on the deck enjoying a sunny day. Don’t worry if you have to start and stop but see if you can keep your pen down the entire time. Focus for 15-30min intervals a couple times a day or every other day. It’s all about practice and training your brain and hand to work together…remember when you started writing in grammar school?! It takes time.

So…Kitty says “get doodling”!!