Here’s the reason: Our brain works fastest when we tell it what we SHOULD DO, not when we tell it what NOT to do… Whenever one of the little Tykes started running on the wet pavement (very dangerous)-the life guards were instructed to shout “WALK!”… They didn’t shout “DON’T RUN!”… When my daughters were in high school, they were all life guards at our local swimming pool. Stick with me a minute…while I share a story… REALLY? No wonder so many beginners get frustrated and quit Free Motion Quilting! “Stitch a wiggling, meandering line that doesn’t cross itself.”.“Stippling is closely spaced, random quilting lines that do not cross and are gently curved.”.I did a quick Google search of how to stipple and here are some of the descriptions and directions: Now, I know many of you like these stitches, and it’s nothing personal…it’s just that every beginner is told to “just stipple”… I know there are some really great quilters and quilt teachers reading this blog, as well as newer quilters who are finding out what works for them.As I have mentioned many times, I want to Ban the Stipple quilting stitch and it’s larger cousin, the Meander stitch. I hope these thoughts are helpful if you're on the learning curve for meandering. And every 10 or so minutes I find the area I started with and hold it up against the area I'm currently working, to see if I am loosening up too much. To counter this I try to purposely make my stitching bigger and more open as I start. My meandering, and probably most people's, tends to loosen up a bit as I go, with my curves getting bigger the longer I quilt.I could save myself a lot of ripping if I always followed this advice. If you get ahead of yourself and don't know where you are going next, STOP and take a breath and decide.If you've been stuck on meandering I invite you to spend a little time sketching, and see if the twosie-threesie thing helps at all. Whenever I get the feeling that "oh no! this wavy line won't stop!" I toss in one of these to get me off on a new direction. My own personal epiphany: when stitching, try to add twosies (two-lump units) and threesies (three-lump units) as you go to keep from getting into a crazy long wiggle. This lets you practice meandering while just moving in one general direction (to the right) instead of all over the quilt. Or you could just meander in wide (6-10") rows across the quilt, keeping the edges curvy on each row so the next row can nestle up against it. I like the way Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson plans her quilting, shown in this picture. Leah Day of the Free Motion Quilting Project talks about how she sections a quilt in this video.
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