"Fast And Free .5" practicing

Things went much better today while doing the FMQ excercises.  I got most of my tension issues worked out once I put the setting on "Woven Heavy".  If your machine has settings like this, use it.  I completely forgot this last night.  DUH.

I set my machine speed to a lower setting so I can keep better control.  My Topaz has 4 speed settings.  My Janome 6600 has three; turtle slow, slow and Speedy Gonzolas which get really annoying for FMQ.  The Topaz has far more regular speeds which are more managable for detailed work.

I also realized that Patsy starts at the top.  I find that harder as you can't see where you've been.  If I start at the bottom and work my way up, I don't get locked into a corner.  I did try it from the top after some confidence built in, but I still find working from the bottom up easier.

I did pretty good at the first stitch-outs.  The further I got, the easier the loops were to make.  Then I got to the suns.  Oh..this isn't pretty.  I'm sure that it's not that bad, but the rays wouldn't go straight and they looked like dejected flowers. I just started cringing.

I got to the next chapter on linear designs.  Ohhh, this is way hard.  Finding entrance/exit routes gave me a headache and I kept messing up.  Now the designs themselves aren't bad, it's the backing yourself into a corner that was killing me.

If all else fails, print out the charts from Patsy's site, stick one on top of the sample and stitch it out:

This makes a lot more sense now.  It's not hard but I still need to learn to visualize space better.  The rest of the designs are far more complicated than my brain can take right now.  I'll do them another day.