When it comes to machine quilting, there are two methods to choose from, walking foot designs, and free motion quilting designs.

Walking foot designs are fantastic for beginners because the sewing machine maintains a lot of the control which gives you a good consistency, but forces you to travel in one direction which limits the range of designs you can quilt.

Free motion quilting requires you to take more control of the quilting which comes with a learning curve that many quilters struggle with. That being said, if you are willing to conquer the learning curve, having free motion quilting as a skill in your quilting skill tool box that provides a level of freedom and creativity that will have you actually excited for the machine quilting portion of your project.

Today we’re talking about what it actually means to master a free motion quilting design and what to really expect free motion quilting for the first time. I’m going over tips and hacks to help you get a more consistent higher quality FMQ result while you are learning this skill so you start to actually look forward to machine quilting your own quilts.

What is Free Motion Quilting?

A standard sewing machine typically forces you to feed fabric into the machine from the front of the machine, to the back, in a straight line. The feature of the machine called the “feed dogs”  assist in helping you feed the quilt in at a speed that matches the speed of the needle, allowing the machine to tightly control stitch length and tension.

Free motion quilting is a machine quilting technique where you disengage the feed dogs allowing the fabric to move in any direction into the machine. This allows you to stitch curves, curls, and change direction without having to rotate the quilt, however the machine no longer has the feed dogs to control the speed that the fabric moves, you now have to take over that role.

Not only do you have to be able to draw the design itself, but you have to mind the machine at the same time to make sure your stitches are being made as at a consistent length so you get the same clean look that you’re used to with a walking foot.

If you’re willing to muscle through the growing pains of learning free motion quilting, the ability to stitch in any direction will allow you to create endless custom machine quilting designs for your quilts. And you’ll never have to compromise your dream custom quilting design for the price of a long arm ever again!

For a crash course on free motion quilting, check out my quick start guide to free motion quilting.

Common Initial Expectations for Free Motion Quilting

Pictures of free motion quilting often give the impression that it is easy. “It’s essentially doodles, curls, straight lines, and loop de loops, I can draw those in my sleep!”

And then you go to do it on your sewing machine and go, “Uh oh.” easier said than done. The goal of today is to talk about what to expect free motion quilting the first few times so you don’t get discouraged and think FMQ “just isn’t for you” if things don’t go as expected. So take the following with a grain of salt. Everyone is different with different strengths and opportunities for improvement.

With that in mind, here’s a few of the common false impressions a quilter tends to expect free motion quilting for the first time.

Instant Mastery

“If I can draw the design on paper, I can recreate it on the quilt.”

Imagine two friends, each holding one of your arms and sporadically pulling and pushing them as you try to draw those designs on the paper. It’ll be a bit harder to draw that same design with the same consistency.

It takes a bit to understand how the physics of the bulk of your quilt will work with and against you during the free motion quilting process.

Your Stitches Will Look the Same

A factor most people don’t even realize they have to consider is that your stitches will not look the same as when you use your walking foot.

You now control everything about how the line of stitching is created, that includes how fast or slow the quilt is fed into the machine. The faster you move the quilt compared to the needle, the larger your stitches will be, the slower you move, the smaller the stitches will be.

Coordination between your feet and hands is a new aspect to consider that you typically can ignore with the walking foot. The machine handles it for you.

Your Designs Will Be Flawless

Most quilters start learning free motion quilting on their home domestic sewing machine, however most pictures online are using a long arm sewing machine. The problem is, when you start on a domestic machine, you can only look at the 4″x4″ swatch of quilt that is directly under your needle.

You can’t see how your design is sitting in the grand scheme of the rest of the quilt. Is it sitting straight? Is it proportional compared to the others? Are your lines actually straight? Or do they have to curve a bit at the ends because your end point was out of sight when you started and you drifted a bit?

Even with the added benefit of being able to see where you are going better on a long arm, it’s difficult to eyeball a repeating design and get it recreated perfectly every time. On a domestic machine it’s even harder without some help.

You just need to “Master” a single design

If you don’t have the ability to manage the bulk of your quilt, it doesn’t matter what design you are trying to stitch. The quilt itself will impact the shapes you are attempting to stitch to some degree.

If you can’t maintain a consistent speed for stitch length, it won’t matter what design you’re working on, your line of stitching will still look at least a little off.

The skills are the same no matter what design you’re working with, so “mastering” a single design shouldn’t be your initial goal. If you can nail the basic skills that are universal between designs, you’ll actually find that you’ll be able to move between new designs without much practice at all.

Realistic Expectations for Free Motion Quilting

All is not lost! There are ways around these new challenges! There are tips and tricks people are using that you don’t see from the pictures online that can help you overcome the new frustration that might be setting in. Lets move on to the actual things you should expect free motion quilting for the first time.

Imperfections Are Normal

Your stitch length will never be as consistent as a machine’s. Your designs will almost never be straight, or symmetric, and that’s okay.

You don’t have to be perfect, when you step back from the quilt at the end, those little flaws will disappear into the grand scheme of the rest of the quilt.

And once you wash the quilt for the first time, every flaw you THOUGHT you knew was there will actually disappear completely with the fabric and batting shrunk up.

Give yourself room to learn and know that you’re your greatest critic. Most people outside of the hobby won’t notice a thing.

Expect to Use Tools to Help

There is often a pride thing telling you that you “should” be able to do this without help.

The professionals do, so why shouldn’t you be able to?

The thing is that the professionals don’t do it without help.

Whether its using rulers, marking, stitch regulators, or stencils, even the professionals are using tools to help them work smarter not harder.

If you are struggling with a specific aspect, don’t feel like you shouldn’t use tools to help yourself get a higher quality product! If you find long term that you no longer need the tool then just consider it temporary training wheels.

Our machine quilting stencils are perfect for helping you get a consistently repeatable design that you don’t have to think about. Never used a quilting stencil before? Check out my full tutorial here.

Stitch Length Consistency Will Never Be Perfect

Short of using a stitch regulator, with stitch length, you’ll likely eventually come to the conclusion that close enough is good enough.

You aren’t a machine, you’ll never have perfect stitch length consistency, but the more you practice, the more you’ll find that the range of stitch lengths you end up with gets smaller.

While initially you’ll notice the difference between a .5mm stitch and a 4mm stitch, as you practice, your stitches will start falling within a range closer to 2-3.5. The contrast in lengths is much smaller and you won’t notice the variation anywhere near as easily. Especially when your stitches will gradually phase in and out of different lengths instead of a stark change.

Thread Color Matters

There are ways to hide less than perfect machine quilting and ways to make it stand out. Thread color choice is one of those ways.

Choosing a thread color that contrasts the fabric colors in the quilt will cause the stitching to be more noticable and draw attention to the machine quilting. Choosing a thread color that blends in will make flaws disappear into an overall texture.

Be sure to choose one that aligns with your overall goals for the quilt.

Accepting Imperfections and Embracing the Creative Process

No matter how long you’ve been quilting and what tools you’re using, there will always be imperfections in your free motion quilting.

All it takes is a cat jumping on the table on top of the quilt to pull it in a direction you weren’t expecting and you’ll have imperfections in the quilting that no level of experience could have stopped.

You can either choose to break the thread and pull the stitches, starting over again, or you can just incorporate it in and continue on knowing its your little secret no one will ever likely know about.

Appreciate the progress that you have made when it comes to free motion quilting and don’t let one flaw stop you from finishing the quilt.

Expect free motion quilting to be a completely new sewing skill that no amount of skill piecing a quilt top will transfer to. You’ll be starting from the ground up with your sewing machine on this one, and that’s okay.

Overcoming the “Fear of Ruining It”

My biggest suggesting here is to just start, but start simple.

One of my favorite ways to do this is using our walking foot friendly pantograph stencils for domestic machines.

Mark the pantograph design on the quilt, and start with your walking foot for a line or two. Then switch to your free motion foot and try the same design using free motion quilting.

If you are really frustrated with the free motion work, you can either choose to leave the line of stitching and switch back to your walking foot, or you can rip the line altogether and start it over.

Either way, you’ve dipped a toe, without committing to a whole quilt of it, and you have a backup plan in case things really go south that you know you’ll still be happy with the end product. No potential for ruining.

Who knows, you may find that you like using the free motion foot so much better that you end up doing the entire quilt with it.

Never used a stencil like this before? Continue reading for my full length tutorial of using a quilting stencil like this on your domestic machine here.

Good luck!