Free-Motion Quilting Workbook: Angela Walters Shows You How!

More times than I care to count, I have stood over a quilt ready to start machine quilting, only to hesitate. I knew what I wanted to quilt, I could see the design in my mind, but I couldn’t get my hands to translate that vision into actual quilting. From talking to other machine quilters, I know I am not the only one who has felt that way!

A huge portion of machine quilting is just knowing where to go next. Because of that, I tell anyone who will listen to me (quilters, students, and even random store clerks) that sketching the quilting designs is a great way to teach your brain how the designs flow. Once you know where to go next, you are more than halfway there!!

How Does Sketching a Design Help?

In every class I teach and every book I write, I encourage sketching as a way to practice machine quilting. I know it works, because it was a huge help to me when I began my own quilting journey.

When my first quilting machine was delivered to my house over ten years ago, my son was six months old. This means that from the very beginning, my quilting time was limited. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t practice. When I couldn’t quilt, I would practice sketching the quilting designs over and over. In fact, I would sketch designs while my kids colored next to me at the table. Talk about multitasking! No piece of paper was safe. I had sketchbooks all over the house and stacks of random scrap