When I bought the Bernina in 2008 after my beloved Janome expired (it did not agree with the humidity of the tropics, poor thing!) one of the things that really sold me on the 440 QE model was the BSR that was included in the package. The BSR is a stitch regulator designed for with FMQ. At that time I was an enthusiastic FMQer but was still struggling with getting my stitches a consistently even length, and looked to the BSR as the answer to all my worries. (Actually, that may have been a big part of my justification to D as to why the *need* for that particular machine existed, ha!)
And then something happened - and I'm not sure what exactly, but I'm going to blame user error in large part for it - and the BSR proved to be lovely, but not the answer to all things. And in my frustration there was probably a bit of oversight and not paying attention to those other critical quilting factors like space and taking your time, and reducing drag and user error (again!) and and and....and the results of my efforts were less than stellar; certainly I was less than impressed. I started doing more straight line quilting (and variations of that) and it has gotten to the point where I seem to have almost most definitely have been avoiding FMQ. How ridiculous!
So tonight, I stopped thinking about it and procrastinating about it, and instead made a little quilt sandwich or 2 (destined for cushions if I haven't completely lost my mojo!) and tried a whole heap of FMQ practicing. And I enjoyed it! And it's looking okay! Yay! Now I'm trying to avoid kicking myself for making it such an elephant in my studio, and instead am going to make a conscious effort to try out some of those gorgeous FMQ designs floating around the blogoshpere.
Tell me, have you had or developed any similarly strange reservations or fears in your stitching journeys?
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