Race Horse or Turtle?

My October 23, 2017, post announced my intention to begin a series of posts touching on questions related to sewing and/or quilting. This is my first installment.

What's Your Style

Labeling someone or something as a race horse means they pursue their task very quickly. A turtle, on the other hand, would be symbolic of slow, methodical movement. In the context of this post I’m using the analogy to compare the speed at which you operate your sewing machine.

Do you press your foot petal gently, moving the fabric beneath the presser foot slowly and carefully?

Or

Do you make your machine operate as fast as possible by pushing the foot petal all the way down?

Now I know you can easily answer this question silently, in your head, but lets get a discussion going. Lets see how many comments we can generate.

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23 thoughts on “Race Horse or Turtle?

  1. Hi Cindy,
    HAHA – can there be a race hurtle?! I don’t use the presser foot at all, but instead just the speed lever. I have it constantly set at a pretty sedate speed, and only set it to maximum when I’m filling the bobbin (who has time to mess around when one needs the bobbin filled). So, I would say I’m definitely a turtle. ~smile~ Roseanne

  2. Oh, dear, I don’t do either one! Both of my machines have speed control buttons. The Bernina will go half speed and the Viking has 3 settings. I use the middle one there and the lower setting on the ‘nina. Then, I do sometimes go pretty fast (at the lower speed, anyway – LOL) on straight long seams, but there are other seams where I only sew a few stitches at a time, and slowly. I know there’s no right or wrong answer, but like everything I do, it seems my personality is to try to steer a course down the middle. LOL

  3. I want to be a hybrid! When I was a race horse in my early days of quilting I made so many mistakes. I still make mistake whenever my inner race horse flares up. A turtle might be too slow for me so I would like to be maybe a turtle that has a booster or a race horse who has taking a moderate sedative – ha! 🙂

  4. I tend to be heavy footed on the pedal. I’ve been working on slowing down and being more consistent in the manner in which I press the petal. It seems I enjoy the process more and I improve my seam accuracy as I become a turtle.
    I’ve been doing this for three years and I’m still trying to find my groove.

      1. When I have to sew very carefully around curves, matching multiple layers of seams, or sewing around applique. As you noticed, I invent words that mean nothing to anyone but me. 🙂

      2. Peggy, 😁 I think I knew what you meant. Your explanation makes perfect sense. You can make up whatever words you would like. As long as you understand them that’s all that counts. 🤓👍👍

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