Pantographers Rejoice!

I just don't seem to have the eye/personality/"it" factor to do those amazing free-motion quilting patterns without a net! At least, I don't have it right now (if ever). Life's too short, and I'm not going to beat myself up about it; after all, somebody needs to keep pantograph designers in business, neh?

I decided on an edge-to-edge pattern for Sister (Stacked Snailz), and tried free-handing a larger version of it:

Uh-uh.

Some more graphics manipulation brought it to the size I wanted, so I covered the messed-up area with my trusty Press 'n Seal

then tried building off of that, but within a couple of pen strokes realized I was relying solely on the paper pattern for marking, not my eye, positioning the pattern and flipping it up and back to make my marks.

It was at that point that I gave up any pretense of thinking I could really FMQ reliably, outside of a standard meander (which is still stressful) and my favorite border wave. Out came my paper scissors, and within a few minutes some landing points were cut from the stencil:

Pivot points, bases of each U, and the extremes of the largest curves were all cut into so I could make a mark on the fabric.

From there it was a matter of drawing in the base curve of each U

then connecting the lines to form the arches.

I'm not terribly concerned about drawing the lines perfectly, nor having the pins getting in the way while I try to draw them. From experience I know my stitching won't be exactly on the line anyway.

So, I guess my "free motion" quilting is on par with someone saying they can sketch, but only if they can trace the image from something already drawn. And I'm okay with that. Plus: I can sketch.