So there I was, looking at the wall hanging that needed some freehand quilting to be completed, and I really wanted to take a crack at a wave pattern for the latticework.

But. The way I was taught to do freehand quilting was, 1) lower the feed dogs), 2) set your stitch length to 0, and 3) go as fast as you can. Which, to be honest, has resulted in some pretty wonky quilting as I shoot past a guideline but that’s what I was supposed to do, right?

Plus the Brit was on a business call in his office which is next to mine, and I didn’t want to fire up the machine to full blast as I quilted this border. So I figured it would be much quieter if I throttled the speed and did it very, very slowly.

Since my machine has a speed control I reduced it to very slow, stuck the wall hanging under the needle, and started quilting. And by God I had perfect control over the needle and where it was going next! Granted, I had to control the hanging so that I didn’t create really big stitches as I moved it but I was astounded at how simple this was to create precise freehand quilting.

The hanging should be finished by tomorrow so I’ll take pics when it’s done. In the meantime I feel like I’ve leveled up as a quilter.