Craftsy Month – Free-Motion Quilting Essentials

This post is part of Craftsy Review Month on Sew Sweetness. To see a schedule of all posts, click here! Today’s post is from Reece of Happy Okapi! Check out Reece’s blog for lots of sewing and bag-making goodness!

When I started out sewing, I made small projects for my kids with Pinterest tutorials, eventually I built my way up to purchased PDFs, and now making bags is my passion. The sewing community is so intermixed though, and I’m so inspired by all the quilters I follow on social media. I’ve started to incorporate some straight line quilting in some of my bags, but the free motion quilting is something that has really intrigued me. It’s an art form all on its own. When Sara asked which class I might be interested in taking I browsed through Craftsy’s free motion quilting classes and decided to try out Free-Motion Quilting Essentials, with Christina Cameli.

The Class
This class is phenomenal! The class offers 3 hours of video instruction. The beginning is all about setting up the machine for FMQ – I even picked up a great tip on cleaning my machine that I’ve started to use on a regular basis. Christina also goes through preparing the fabric to be quilted, and as a very novice quilter, I really appreciated that. Once she gets started after the initial practice/test stitches, most of the rest of the class is showing different FMQ stitching techniques. Christina dedicates one section of a quilt block for a different type of stitch, including how to bring those designs around corners and to the end of quilts.

At the end, she shows how to combine the designs, and a bit of design theory on how to choose which type of stitching for your quilt. Here’s the lesson plan from the course:

Clearly, a lot of thought was put into the layout of the class. It starts out with some basics and leads up to some very intricate free-motion quilting. It got me very excited to join along, so I even went out and got myself some quilting gloves. I think I’ll experiment a bit more before I cut some of the fingers out like Christina suggested though.

In addition to the extensive video, the class also includes some downloadable materials. There is a metric conversion guide and loads of practice exercises. I practiced a bit and it’s not that good, but let me tell you: it was so much fun! I can really see how people can’t stop. I almost don’t want to show you but one thing Christina stresses a lot in the class is to not expect to be perfect right away and not to be hard on yourself. So here’s one of my practice blocks:

The Instructor
Christina Cameli is a blogger and quilter. She is the author of 2 books and has been featured in several quilting and sewing magazines.  I found she has a really calm and relaxing way about her. I really liked that she emphasized not to expect perfection *ahem, see my practice block above* and that she also included tips on proper body mechanics. Her instructions were very clear in the class and I found it all very easy to understand. I also noticed that she answered all the questions in the discussions section, which is really important when you’re trying to learn a new skill.

Recommendation
I think this class is perfect for anyone who is thinking about either starting free-motion quilting, or improving your skills. Even if you have dabbled in FMQ before, this class will help you put it all together, plan your blocks and quilts, and likely learn a few new techniques. Even if you aren’t a quilter per se, there are many sewing projects that can be enhanced with some FMQ. Also, once you take this class, it’ll be all you think about and you’ll want to FMQ everything!