Through the wonders of my phone being connected to the internet, it comes to my attention that a few of you are making some new years resolutions about learning FMQ. Hooray!
If I was a smart business woman I would say you should get right on ordering my books and my class.
Alas...I am not a smart business woman. I mean, I'd love it if you ordered those things, and if you want to go right ahead! But I'd like to mention that you don't need to. What you need is a darning or free-motion foot and some gloves (I know there's like 0.5% of you that don't use gloves but based on what I see from my students I'd say if you're a human you should start with the gloves).
And after you have those two things... you need to jump in.
I have a kindergartener right now. And she's learning to write (in two completely different languages!). And sometimes, it's messy. Her 2s and 5s and 7s are often backwards. Same thing sometimes with her Ns. Gs are throwing her sometimes. But because she is 5 and possessed of that kind of determination and certainty that she will get it, she just shrugs it off and keeps going. And I have no doubt that her painstaking attention to each and every wobbly letter will one day give way to smooth, flowing script. Her bizarrely sized characters will normalize and her numbers will all face the right way. I know that will happen because she keeps showing up. Five days a week I drop her off at school and she does it. And you did it once upon a time and now you can write too.
So, the question for you, with your resolution, is not whether you can free-motion quilt. Of course you can. The question is whether you will show up.
Now, you don't need to practice free-motion quilting 5 times a week, that's not what I'm getting at at all. Maybe you only have 30 minutes a week. That's all I had for several years. Take it! It's golden! Those 30 minutes a week will add up to 25 hours by the end of the year.
Have you heard of this book "The 20 Hour Rule"? Probably not, unless you listen to the same podcasts I do. Anyway, the subtitle of the book is "How to learn anything: FAST". Did you hear that? This author thinks putting 20 hours into a new skill is learning it fast! So if you have a FMQ resolution for 2015 I think the first thing you should do, before shopping for books or classes or whatnot is figure out where you can get this minimum of 20 hours to put into your goal.
You'll get there. That's what resolutions are about. Getting there. Show up, my friends, and you'll do just fine.