Deliberate Practice

The advice often offered to quilters regarding free motion work is : Practice, practice, practice. Although good advise it will not necessarily help to improve your skills. What is essential is deliberate practise. It is necessary to evaluate your results and constantly and deliberately try to improve it. To learn more about the difference deliberate practice can make, read this guest blog post at Expert Enough by Lukas Kyska of The Aspiring Guitarist.


When I wanted to become a great canoeist 35 years ago I did not realize that it was not good enough to paddle up and down the lake for an hour every day. The day of the great event I was still last. I have never pushed myself to exhaustion. I was tired every night but all that practice did not give me an competitive edge.

The snowflakes were enhanced with a bit of sparkling paint. Still in complete.

At the International Quilt Convention this week end in Johannesburg (South Africa) I took a class with Susan Brubaker Knapp. We rarely have the opportunity to take classes from International teachers so I made use of this chance to learn from a master. The snowflake design we made in the class force one to carry out intricate small movements. It provided good practice in micro-stippling.

 I decided to use a small zig-zag stitch working this on the diagonal. It was quite tricky to find the right diagonal line but I was very happy with the way it contribute to the lacy effect we wanted to achieve.

Deliberate practice make the difference

To improve results one need to evaluate the results you achieve. Then you need to make a decision on the changes that is necessary to improve the results. In your practice session your aim must be to achieve those improved results. Constant re evaluation and adjustments is necessary to make your practice session worth while in improving your skills.


Susan is an excellent teacher and as always in any class I learned quite a few skills and got some really worth while tips. We had a marvelous and inspiring time at the quilt convention.


Please share your tips on deliberate practice.

Struggeling with quilting

I am quilting my third quilt on the frame and I am struggling. I was really wishing that I had a long arm teacher and did not have to figure everything out on my own. My Bernina do not like invisible monofilament thread when I quilt on the frame. So I was so glad when my order of Invisafil arrived. This is a lovely fine, fine thread and on my white quilt would have the invisible look I want for ditch quilting.

My thread indicator continuously show thread breakage and the machine stopped. There was none, so after several "unnecessary" stops I switched the indicator off. Then my thread started to brake as soon as I speed up a bit. Frustrated and feeling helpless I googled Invisafil and longarm quilting.  I read that a longarm quilter said she has to go super slow when using Invisafil and think she will charge clients more if they insist on her using it for their quilts.

I started to work more slowly, I switched the thread breakage indicator on and the machine stop before the thread brake. I then see that there is a spin on the thread as soon as I speed up. Using the thread stand on top of the machine did not eliminate the problem. Decreasing the tension even more (to 0.5) made it a bit better. This is really a lovely thread and it produce stunning results- it is nearly invisible without the tension problems that the monofilament create.

As soon as I started to do free motion patterns in the border no cure wanted to work. So I have decided  I will use this thread as a bobbin thread and on a low low tension for ditch work.

I am a follower of the blog: Expert Enough and this article relates so well to machine quilting. We so often hear that to become good at machine quilting there is just one thing and that is practise, practise, practise. Corbett Barr say in this article that without quality added to make it deliberate practise, all this practising will not bear real fruit.

When I teach machine quilting I try to be very encouraging just to get students going- fear of stitching can turn a machine quilting class into a non sewing class. Yet, I realise I should also teach students to really look at what they stitched, what the ideal look is and urge them to narrow that gab with deliberate practise.

Diane Gaudynski is the Free motion teacher of the month at Sewcalgal. I have learnt machine quilting with the help of Harriet Hargrave and Debra Wagner's books but it was with Diane's input (through her books) that I really strived to do better. In this article she emphasis working slowly and precisely. I am once again inspired to do deliberate practise on the frame (I was ready to quit yesterday). Video's of longarm quilters create the impression that it is so easy. I can tell you it is hard!

For me the difficult thing is to have the same control I was used to when I was free motion quilting. Now I must 'drive' the machine and to get straight lines and smooth curves where you want it, is not so easy. I do have the advantage that what I want to quilt is already part of my DNA so I only have to concentrate on moving the machine to carry these patterns out.

Are there any other mid arm or frame quilters that can encourage me? Have you become an Expert Enough and what was the secrets of your deliberate practise? Please share these with me.