FMQ Skills and Drills: Open Meandering 

Awesome job Lois! that is a huge accomplishment!

Your doing great work Christy! Keep it up!

That's awesome Kathi Glomb! We'd love to see pictures of these quilts sometime!

Practice, practice, practice! It didn't always come to me that easily! :)

Thanks ffanny2retire! I appreciate the support! :)

Susan, fantastic to hear! Keep it up!

We'd love to hear how it goes Gail!

I know you can Gene_J! Keep up the great work!

Welcome to Man sewing fam Miamisweets! Glad you found us!

Hi Bernadette! Due to the nature of t-shirts and photos, stitch in the ditch is a good plan. Especially to start, this will stop some for the stretching of the quilt top if you go back and do FMQ. So, oldschool is good here, then add more if you wish by tracing the designs in the T-shirts. I usually avoid the photos with the FMQ. Have fun sewing!

That's good to hear, Joan! I'll definitely keep it in mind to show you all the back once I'm done. :)

I suggest dropping your feed dogs completely, or setting your stitch length to zero. Here's a link to a tutorial that might help you out. :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QFbw1LAPZjg.html

That's an excellent question, Lesley! If it were my quilt, I'd opt for cream thread all around. It would blend in with your background well and pop against the blue.

+Man Sewing Thanks Rob I was actually thinking cream would be best 😀

Hopefully my FMQ series and the free printables have been helpful with that, Marlene. Those arrows are always very helpful. :)

You sure can. Its referred to as"quilt as you go". Its handy if you are making a large quilt on a small machine. Can work on about any size project.

You can do that honeybadgerzs! It's a great way to go!

+Man Sewing Thank you for your response, (slight fan-girl moment!) watching your videos has shown me how to start with free motion quilting, especially the recent one with Jenny which answered a lot of questions for me. I have to ask though, which quilt block you would recommend for an absolute beginner? My aim is to make some, I expect the first few to fail, and use them to practice the quilting. I don't, however, want to demoralise myself by having complete nightmares with the first step of my journey. Btw, your daughter is a real cutie x

I'm a sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of person, so I've never used something like that. But it sounds like an awesome idea, especially if you're starting out!

Hi Neko! My machine is a Baby Lock Jane, and it has a rather standard throat size. You may be working with a smaller, travel sized machine.

Neko, it is difficult pushing threw a quilt of regular size/queen with a regular home machine........many of the quilts you see done on Utube they are doing smaller versions or art type quilt for demo.....Keep practicing and you will use to the pushing but may never be able to to certain designs on a queen quilt unless you get a machine with a larger throat.....I use a janome but hope to get a juki soon with a nice large throat.......just an idea....bottom line.....it takes practice and will always be tough on large quilts/

Hi Lori! It's the Sew Slip Multi Purpose Sheet, and you can buy it here: www.missouriquiltco.com/shop/detail/40242/gossamer-designs/-/sew-slip-multi-purpose-sheet

That's a great suggestion Miss Lucy! I'll see what I can do for future tutorials!

Thank you, Rob. I have tried it, and thus my question. I do get confused when I try to free motion by where to start, and which way to go. I have tried right to left, and top to bottom, but don't think I have tried the left to right. I would be curious to hear from any "lefties" out there. I love your videos and have learned so much from your tutorials. FMQ is something I would love to master. I would be interested to hear from some lefties on this.

Hey Joen H Zamojcin! Me and Jenny Doan talk about this in my recent tutorial. You can check it out by clicking on this link below! :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q2bffXf4PQU.html

Thanks for calling this video to my attention. Loved watching Jenny (an accomplished quilter) trying to learn this technique. I love to watch her tutorials as well and can relate to her left-handedness and angle challenges also. You guys are always fun and informative to watch.

Part of what I love about FMQ is how versatile it is! You can definitely draw your design onto your fabric, but it can be incredibly freeing to just go. You end up having smoother stitch definition this way, if you're confident in how you're doing it. If you'd rather draw it on, I'd recommend using a heat-erasable pen meant for fabric, like the one you can purchase here: www.missouriquiltco.com/shop/detail/4045/pilot/-/black-frixion-pen

I use 40 wt thread for quilting, Lisa! You can find a good assortment of this kind of thread here: www.missouriquiltco.com/shop/browse?q=40%20wt

It's a Baby Lock Jane, so it does come with computerized stitches. :) It helps a ton!

I'll keep that in mind for future tutorial ideas. Thanks for the great suggestions! :)

This black box is actually a camera, so I have better quality videos Irene. Stitch regulators are awesome to have as well though!

You should be able to Justin Phillips!

With a lot of practice we all can Maria! Let me know what questions and concerns you have about this. I'd love to help out!

Absolutely! You can get a Man Sewing t-shirt here: www.missouriquiltco.com/shop/browse?q=man%20sewing

I appreciate your suggestion Vivienne! Thank you!