Dry-Erase Board, Your New Friend in the Sewing Room

LuAnn Kessi wrote a blog-post some time back that I had the great good fortune to stumble upon and she opened me up to a new idea I want to pass along!

I do my own machine quilting on a Tin Lizzie 18 (love my machine!) and am constantly on the lookout for exciting new quilting lines to try.  I love to free-hand with the thread and don't care to use pantograms although I do think they are useful on the right quilt-top.

Coming up with new repetitive motifs is always something of a challenge and when I can't come up with something new, I tend to revert back to my same-ol' same-ol'.  So doodling is a natural way to explore, letting the mind go free and see where the pen takes me. I also end up with a lot of wasted paper....... and that is where LuAnn Kessi comes in.

She showed photos of her dry-erase board and images of how she creates her lovely flowing lines of a fiddlehead fern as a quilting motif and my mind went "boing!!!!! Why didn't I think of that!?"

Not only is this a tool to practice your hand movements before you start stitching, it is great to have hanging close by as a reminder of various lines you plan to use as you travel from top to bottom.  Thank you, LuAnn!