Free-motion quilting offers a stylish embellishment for blanket borders, backgrounds and even individual blocks, which skips the straight, stay-in-the-lines stitching used for most quilts and adopts fancy-free patterns like feathers and circles to quilt the fabric together. 

The advanced quilting technique can also make for hours of frustration when stitch designs become uneven or poor-quality thread snaps mid-stitch. But Natalia Bonner of Piece N Quilt and the author of "Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting: 50+ Visual Tutorials to Get You Started Professional-Quality Results on Your Home Machine" shares her favorite tips for mastering free-motion quilting and sewing beautiful modern quilts.

What do you love about free-motion quilting? 

I love that free-motion quilting gives me the ability to be creative with my quilts. 

Let's say I've got a great free-motion quilt design. How do I quilt that design? 

There are several ways. One way is drawing with chalk, or the disappearing markers, for me I really like to just have at it with my creativity and not draw anything at all! 

How important is thread quality with free-motion quilting? 

Thread quality is very, very important. Why spend a lot of time and money piecing something and then use crappy thread and be frustrated with the final result?

How does speed influence stitches? Is it better to free-motion quilt fast or slow? 

It really depends, if you have a stitch regulator you can be a little bit faster. Honestly, I'd say as long as you keep a consistent speed you'll be fine. 

What mistakes do those new to free-motion quilting often make? 

I'd say probably trying to go to fast and tension. Make sure your tension is on!

Do you have a question about machine quilting or building a craft blog for Natalia? You can ask here in the comments or via Facebook or Twitter. If you have a question about a specific item, you can email us an image at info@craftfoxes.com.

Natalia Bonner is the author of "Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting: 50+ Visual Tutorials to Get You Started Professional-Quality Results on Your Home Machine," published by Stash Books. Images from Piece N Quilt.