Free Motion Quilting Academy Review

Note: Updated August 2021 (prices reflect Fall 2021 enrolment)

Last year, I signed up for Free Motion Quilting Academy for the Fall 2020 cohort. I enrolled in this course because I wanted to uplevel my free motion quilting skills, and also, being completely honest – to get the motivation and inspiration to quilt more! And now that Free Motion Quilting Academy is about to open for enrolment once again, I wanted to share a very open and honest review what exactly FMQA is about and what it involves.

When I first wrote this review, I was halfway through the course. I have since completed and graduated, and HollyAnne has also refilmed the whole course so this review now includes new screenshots, and photos of my finished projects! In full transparency, I am an affiliate, which means if you purchase the course through my link, I make a commission, but as always, I only ever promote things that I truly love and use myself. And just so we’re extra clear, I did pay for my enrolment myself, as it truly was something I wanted to do myself. And I’m so grateful to past Alyce for doing so because the confidence and love of quilting that FMQA has given me is priceless!

So How Does Free Motion Quilting Academy Work?

Free Motion Quilting Academy is an online course hosted on the Kajabi website, with an accompanying Facebook group to provide the community aspect. It runs over 13 weeks, with a mix of weekly instructional modules and practice weeks, covering 30 different quilting motifs. It is structured in such a way that you start off with the easier, fundamental quilting motifs like swirls, meander and switchbacks, before moving on up to motifs like feathers and graffiti quilting.

For each motif, there is a video tutorial that demonstrates how to create each motif first on paper, and then how to do so on your machine. These videos are clearly lit with good audio, and is taught at a good pace. On the practice weeks, there is no new content released as it’s an opportunity for you to practice the motifs already taught, and provide you that time and space to catch up if needed.

Navigating the Kajabi platform is very intuitive to work through Free Motion Quilting Academy. When you log in, you can see all the released modules on the home page, and you can simply click on which motif you would like to do next. And here’s a sneaky hot tip – I like to speed the video up a little on the motifs I’m comfortable with so that I can listen out for any good tips to implement, but I can speed up the process a little. For the new-to-me motifs, I set it back to 1.0 speed to catch it all!

There is also a whole bonus module that goes into great detail about creating a quilting plan, with suggestions for a wide range of shapes. Creating a quilting plan is really helpful when you’re first getting started with free motion quilting, and these videos are really useful to help inspire and guide you in your decision making.

Free Motion Quilting Academy Graduation

What is so clever about Free Motion Quilting Academy is that you are not just practicing motifs in an once-off isolated manner, HollyAnne instead encourages you to put it all into practice with two projects – a free motion quilting sampler, and a wholecloth mini quilt. And once you have finished both of these, you can apply to “graduate” in which HollyAnne hosts a live video where she showcases each and every quilter who has finished and their finished projects. You can check out the Fall 2020 graduation here! And then each person receives an exclusive enamel pin to mark their achievement. How cool is that?

The free motion quilting sampler is where you quilt each of the motifs to fill a 12″ x 12″ space to show that you’ve at least attempted each motif. HollyAnne is not looking for perfection! She just wants to know that you’ve tried. It can be wholecloth, and then mark out the “blocks” to quilt, but many of us pieced 30 squares of fabric for a more fun alternative. The key is that it needs to be solid fabric so that you can clearly see the quilting.

I made a rainbow sampler using a variety of solids, and using my Mini Masterpieces thread set to match most of the thread colours. You can read more about my free motion quilting sampler quilt here.

The wholecloth mini quilt is where you create an image on your solid fabric just with free motion quilting. It can be any image or design you like – there have been some amazing pictures created! Like my fellow Melbournian, Gabrielle, who created this incredible Harry Potter wholecloth quilt.

My wholecloth mini quilt was so fun to create – I sketched the silhouette on first with a Sewline pen to get the right shape and stitched over it a couple of times in a mustard thread to make it nice and clear. I then went to town with coral thread filling it in, before using a mid-grey for the outside. You can read the full story behind this quilt here.

Timezones

This is the trickiest part of being a part of a global community like quilting! And it’s something HollyAnne is very aware of in all she does (she’s based in Georgia, USA). The main course consists of prerecorded lessons, so the only live aspect of Free Motion Quilting Academy is the live Q&A she hosts each week in the Facebook group. And she specifically alternates the timing of these each week so that no matter where you are in the world, you will be able to catch at least every second Q&A live! For us here in Australia, her 8pm (EST) works out to be mid-morning for us. And if you can’t catch it live, you can always watch the replay later on either in the Facebook group, or she also uploads the video to the course in Kajabi.

For the live Q&As, you can submit questions ahead of time on a specific post she puts up and then goes through on the weekly live. You can also ask questions at any time in the Facebook community and other students or alumni will helpfully jump in with wise and kind responses, and HollyAnne too as soon as she can! So if you can’t make it live, you certainly won’t miss out on the opportunity to have your questions answered.

Your fellow quilting rockstars are full of incredibly kind and encouraging people who will cheer you on through the ups and downs of

Not on Facebook?

Do you miss out on any content if you’re not on Facebook? Definitely not! Is it still worth enrolling in the course if you’re not on Facebook? Most definitely!

But I’ll be completely honest – you get a lot of value out of being a part of the Facebook group. Being a part of the community as you share your journey and its highs and lows and showing off your progress does provide a great amount of encouragement and motivation. At the very least, I would recommend having Instagram to get a little taste of it, but the Facebook group is certainly the main hub of community for Free Motion Quilting Academy.

Pricing

The cost of joining Free Motion Quilting Academy is the same price as you would pay to send a quilt to a longarmer at just US$297. How’s the saying go… Give a child a fish, and you’ll feed them for a day; teach a child to fish and they’ll be fed for a lifetime. The skills you learn will be with you for the rest of your quilty lifetime!

HollyAnne also offers a 3-payment option for Free Motion Quilting Academy – you can make three monthly payments of US$105 if that’s easier for you.

Enrolment is currently open for the Fall 2021 cohort, so sign up now! Heads up – HollyAnne has said that enrolment won’t open up again for another year (Summer 2022), so now’s your chance.

If you have any questions, go ahead and leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them!