I am known in my family as being a perfectionist. If I try something and don't get it perfect the first time, that's it, I don't do it again.
I have tried machine quilting before. I took a course for machine quilting on my domestic machine. I really like stitching in the ditch or doing straight lines where I can use my walking foot. When using the free motion foot, I couldn't get the stitch length even and couldn't get the curves down. So I don't do free motion quilting.
My mom has a long arm quilting machine. She has been quilting with it for 12 years now. She has been bugging asking me to try it for years. I did give it a go when she first got her Gammill. I did one row of apples. Let me tell you, they were some pretty square apples!!
So of course you can guess, being a perfectionist, I didn't want to touch the machine again... until today!
While reading all of these blogs where people talk about doing machine quilting, I decided I should give the Gammill another try. After all, I am so lucky to have this machine at my disposal, and for free!
I made a quilt this past summer (for me!) and decided I should try quilting it myself. Of course, I needed to practice first!
So, today was the day! We had this charity quilt that needed to be quilted. What better to practice something new!
As you can probably tell, I am not too thrilled with my work. After the first row it was very difficult for me to keep going, but I did! I did the whole quilt myself!
To be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. It was very difficult for me to deal with the emotions I was feeling. Part of me really wants to do this, but the perfectionist in me says, you can't do it right, so just get mom to do it for you. I was mad and frustrated with myself because I didn't have fun and I wanted to quit.
I am really happy I finished the little quilt though and didn't give up.
I will quilt on the long arm again... I just need a little more practice and lots of time...
I think you will get it with practice Ginette, I know when you click with it you will be so happy!!! Mom xx
ReplyDeleteGo for you for trying it and finishing the quilt. What you experienced really resonated with me. I too like to get things right the first time. With FMQ though, you just have to keep at it. What worked for me, in the end, was doing a quilt that I didn't "care" about and breaking up the FMQ into smaller sections. I'd only do as much as I felt comfortable doing in a session, whether it was one, two or later on ten squares. And I also said that I was going to have fun and try something different in each section so that if I didn't like a particular motif, I wouldn't have to do it for long. Oh, and I watched a lot of Leah Day's videos on the free motion quilting project. You can totally do this Ginette! Keep at it. You'll be very glad you did. :)
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