Hi ,

I recently received this question from a student in my Craftsy class Free Motion Quilting a Sampler:


Have you been experiencing this kind of pain too? Can you quilt for an hour without your body hurting?

It's important to acknowledge any pain you feel after quilting for an hour because this could be a serious problem for your quilting hobby. Free motion quilting the average full or queen sized quilt can take several hours and you absolutely don't want to suffer pain during the entire process.

So how do you eliminate pain from your quilting experience?

Having the right machine setup is absolutely key and this starts with having a table that allows your machine to rest on a flush surface with the table top. These are sometimes called flatbed or drop-down sewing tables. Either way, it's an important investment to make to your quilting hobby.

The tables I use at home are Arrow Sewing cabinet's Gidget 2 tables. These are small, sturdy sewing tables with a big cut out to fit any machine. You can even order specially cut inserts to fill the gaps between your machine and the table surface.

Another company with a similar product is the Sew Ezi table. I've seen many students bring these tables to class and they transport very easily. Yet another option is to build your own table, or cut a hole and build a shelf within a table you already own.

So a pain-free quilting setup starts with the table. Getting your machine down lower will allow you to sit up straight and bring your shoulders down so you're not straining your arms. This will also reduce the drag created by pulling and pushing the quilt up over the machine. With a flat surface to work on, free motion quilting a quilt of any size is suddenly much easier.

Even with a flatbed table, larger quilts can still drag against you and be a lot of work to feed through your machine. This is a physically demanding task, no doubt about it! Using inexpensive metal handles, bungee cords, and clamps I literally suspend the outer sections of my quilts from the ceiling. You can read an article about this in more detail here.

Another important factor to look at is your chair. Having the ability to adjust your chair higher or lower is very important because you'll be able to pick the most comfortable position to quilt in for hours at a time. Personally I like using doctors chairs - simple round stools with no back and the ability to adjust much higher and much lower than usual. I've found several chairs like this by simply searching Ebay for "Doctors chair" and finding several for under $100.

Overall I think the pain my student described is most likely due to one of these factors. A taller chair, combined with a flat table surface, and augmented with quilt supporting clamps will make all the difference in the world. Yes, this is an investment, and you should take your time researching different options from buying a table to building it yourself until you find the right fit for you. The ultimate lesson I hope you'll take from this is to never ignore your pain - do something about it!

So with that lecture on pain-free quilting off my chest, let's check out the new designs posted to the Free Motion Quilting Project this week!

I'm calling this design Bloody Sawblades, which is probably the grossest name I've ever picked for a quilting design!

While the name may put you off, the design itself is an awesome combination of Sawblades and Swirling Water and it will work great in either the background or hair sections of Express Your Love. Give it a try this week and make sure to link up with us on Free Motion Quilting Friday!

That's it for this week! I'm off to stitch out more grizzly design with weird names. Honestly picking the names is sometimes the most fun!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day