Signing your quilts

A knitting friend who also sews was telling me that she wanted to upgrade her sewing machine so she could take advantage of the knee lifter, the auto-thread cutter, and the alphabets for monogramming.
Hmmm. I agree that a new machine is worth getting for the knee lifter and the thread cutter, but the built in alphabets are so miniscule and don't look as good as your own handwriting, that I never use mine. But she said she was not so confident about doing free motion anything on the machine.
O boy....I immediately went into teacher mode, and then stopped myself. But here goes anyway.
Remember back when you were learning cursive, maybe back in second grade? And you practiced writing your name in the margins of your homework papers? Not to mention later on writing your boyfriend's name, with yours in a heart. What school girl didn't do that? The fancy penmanship usually included little hearts above the i's, and curliques on the y's. Memories. But that is how we learned isn't it. By just doodling again and again. Same with free motion work. Here's the easy way to break into free motion stitching.  Make a quilt sandwich, at LEAST 12"x12", and put contrasting thread in the needle and any old thing in the bobbin. I like a machine quilting needle, size 12/80 to start. Then lower the feed dogs and apply your darning foot.

Begin by stitching in a circle, moving the fabric around and around. The needle usually is going pretty slow, if you are fearful about applying speed. But notice how jerky the stitches look in this picture. This is because the needle is going too slow for the movement of the fabric.


With a little more speed the stitches smooth out and look better, but are still a little to long for detailed lettering.  The trick is to speed the needle and slow down the movement of the fabric. Seems hard to imagine, but doing it isn't that hard with practice. Everything takes practice.

The faster the needle is going up and down the easier it is to make smooth stitching.

 Next write a short phrase or your name. Start with the needle down and stitch in place and end with needle down and stitch in place, locking the stitching. Clip threads and admire. To make a dot over the i, just move the fabric as the needle goes up and down. The crossed t is stitching to one direction and back again.

Find the right size for your needs by practicing different size writing. Simple Pimple.