Yearly Archives: 2015

Honeymoon Quilt Finish

A couple of months ago my husband and I celebrated our 17th anniversary. This week I finished a quilt made with fabric purchased on our honeymoon on the island of St. John. It may have taken me 16 years to think of how I wanted to use the fabric but once I got going, it didn’t take too long to finish it up. I posted earlier about making the quilt top in August of last year. Because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to quilt it, I set it aside (for nearly a year!) Come January of 2015, I set a goal to finish this quilt up and I did it. This finish means that I do not have any unquilted tops lying around. Yahoo!

This project was fun to plan. I have been reading about whether to stitch in the ditch before starting to FMQ. Honestly, this sounded like a whole lot of extra work. I decided to compromise and I stitched the perimeter of each nine patch. I thought this would stabilize the quilt and hopefully, reduce and puckers on the backing. It is so irritating when you flip the quilt over to check on it and there is a fold. Between pin basting and ditch stitching I was hoping for a better back. Some quilters think it holds the quilt square and prevents distortion. Others say it makes the FMQ work look better. I do think it helped. My quilt stayed square and often, it doesn’t. I didn’t have a single pucker on the back. The only thing is that on the back of the quilt, the ditch stitching is very visible so one has to take that into account when planning the quilting. It doesn’t show much at all on the front. As for any benefit to the look of the quilting on each nine patch, I didn’t notice a huge difference. In fact, after I had quilted about 65% of the project, I noticed that I had skipped ditch stitching one block. That block really didn’t look noticeable different from the others. So, I think it is good forquilt stabilization and keeping square but doesn’t noticeably enhance the FMQ.

I took a look at some quilting sites (mainly Lori Kennedy’s site, The Inbox Jaunt) to get inspiration. I knew that I would do an all over FMQ pattern but wanted just a bit more detail than that. Each of the nine patch blocks have a blue center. Starting with that, I quilted a large flower in the center of each blue square.

I decided that leafy fines would complement the flowers. Using a variegated green YLI quilting thread, I FMQ’d leaves of various sizes on each block. I left the black sashing plain. Because the backing is a light green batik, the FMQ stitching really shows up on the back. Not sure if this is good or bad! For the most part, I am happy with the stitching. Why is it that my eye goes to the little tension blips and the occasional jittery stitching instead of the overall look? For those of you that quilt on your domestic machine, how to you handle the starts and stops? Look closely at the squares that I ditch stitched, see the dark spots at one corner where I stopped and started? I chose to reverse a few stitches rather than knot and bury tons of threads. Not sure I like how this looks. What is the consensus? Do you back tack stitches or knot and bury threads? I know which is cleaner but yikes, burying all of those threads is time-consuming.

The binding is, as usual, one of my favorite parts. I used the honeymoon batik for the border and also for the binding. To add some depth, I attached a black flange to the perimeter of the quilt before binding the quilt. I love the ‘something extra’ that this flange adds to the quilt.

To honor our honeymoon, I tried stitching St. John as well as April, 1998 on a corner of the quilt. Kind of difficult to see but it was a good addition.

When I was binding it, I came upon my two ends that needed to be joined and sighed my heavy, here-we-go sigh. I hate attaching the tails of the binding. This time I looked to Rita over at Red Pepper Quilts. On the off chance that there is someone who hasn’t heard of Rita, she is an amazing quilter who has the most amazing sense of color. Her quilts are bright, happy and so vivid. Truly amazing. If you haven’t looked at her work, now is the time. She has numerous tutorials, several of which talk about binding. This is the one that I used. The result was good so I will refer back to her measurements next time.

I can check this goal off of my 2015 list and move on to another one! I think the next goal I need to work on is some quilt restoration. I have two quilts to restore and I want to get one of them going soon.

Finally, remember the Allison Glass mini swap that I participated in? I blogged about the mini that I made here. There were a few comments asking me to post the mini that I received. Wow, I can’t wait to share it. It is gorgeous. I am so grateful to my partner for putting so much effort into this project!

My partner outdid herself with this. I love the text print that was used as the background on each 2″ square. She appliqued the orange peels with a blanket stitch which was brilliant.

She also made this smaller mini. I think it is intended as a pot holder but I am hanging it on the wall. I don’t want it soaked with food splatter, which we all know would happen.

I also received this sweet wallet. Hand-made and so well done, it is lovely.

The swap was fun and I am thankful that I gave it a try as it pushed me quite far out of my comfort zone. Also, I am truly grateful for the work my partner put into the items I received. That being said, I am not sure I will do another one for a while. I could see participating in one each year. They are quite time-consuming and it set my nerves on edge trying to think of what my partner would want, based on the few hints we are given. The process is a good way to get to know other makers though. It is really a big deal on Instagram and there is a swap for just about anything crafty.

Hope you all have something fun planned for the upcoming weektend.

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks, Quilting Jetgirl’s Thankful Thursday, Let’s Bee Social and Finish It Up Friday. Also with Sew Bittersweet Designs for the June ALYOF Link up.

2015 New Quilt Blogger Blog Hop

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This week marks the first of four weeks that will be spent introducing a number of wonderful quilt blogs! In earlier posts, I mentioned that I am taking part in the 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop. There are about 70 of us in the group and for the past several weeks we have been working together to learn more about blogging and to help each other to improve our blogs. If you have come to Needle and Foot for the first time, via the Blog Hop, welcome!!

First, a bit of background.

I am one lucky person. Married to an amazing guy and mom to four kiddos, I live in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California. We have a bit more than three acres which allows us space for a large vegetable garden (which we couldn’t plant this year due to the wretched drought in California) as well as a coop for six hens. Three of my kids (the boys) are adults and are off living all over the country. My daughter is still at home and will enter high school in the fall.

I have been sewing for over 40 years now (which looks so strange when I see it in print!!) Growing up I sewed many of my clothes and when I became a mom, I sewed clothes for my kids. I started quilting when I was 17. I made three quilts over the next three years and then didn’t make another one until 2012. (If you want to read about the first quilt I made, here is a post.) When I retired from a career in Human Resources in 2012, I suddenly had time to devote to sewing again.The quilting bug (obssession, passion, craze, addiction – call it what you will) bit me hard and I have made a number of quilts over the past few years. If I were to try to describe my style, I would say that while I enjoy almost any type of quilt, I have a propensity to the modern. I love large blocky patterns – I don’t often make a very fussy block. I have always quilted all of my own pieces. It feels right to me that I make my quilt from start to finish. (I have only quilted one queen size and one full size piece, usually I make lap size or mini’s.) I use either straight line or free motion quilting depending on the project. My FMQ is absolutely a work in progress – it is challenging and requires tons of practice. With each project it improves a bit more.

This is my sewing space. Totally as it is – no cleaning or organizing before pictures! I sew on a Janome 6500P and also have an older Janome that is a little workhorse. I love them both.

Here are a few of my favorite projects:

This lap size quilt was made for my amazing daughter-in-law for her birthday. I love the pattern and it was one of the first times I used solids for the bulk of a project.

Naomi’s Birthday Quilt
February, 2014

The quilt below was made for my daughter. I love it because it is the first time I took on a large FMQ project. I had no idea what I was getting into and quilted this without knowing I had to drop the feed dogs for FMQ – I fought the quilt and the machine the entire time. I remember thinking this is so dang hard, why would anyone want to do this for pleasure. See all of that pebbling and all of those spirals? No free motion there, just an amazing amount of tugging and moving. It was nuts. I’ve learned a bit since then!

Julia’s Quilt
October, 2013

This final quilt was made for my sister. I love simple patchwork quilts! This is a lap size quilt with a huge heart pieced into the lower right corner. I love the texture of the matchstick quilting on the heart.

Patti’s Heart Quilt; March 2015

Though my quilting projects are often leaning toward modern, I have an unstoppable passion for anything vintage. I especially like two eras. I love the fabrics from the 1930’s through 1950’s. I recently acquired quite a collection and you can find more information on that here and here. In addition, I collect vintage linens, usually from the 1970’s. There is quite the stash of these in my sewing room now. I have lots of fat quarters listed in my Etsy shop if you are interested in vintage sheets. There is also a smallish collection of vintage patterns listed in the shop.

Here is a simple blogging tip for you: Take your time with each post! Last June when I started this blog, I was learning as fast as I could by reading other blogs and trying to figure out what worked best for me. Over the year, I learned so much. Something that really helps the quality of my writing is to write ahead of time. As much as my schedule allows me, I try to sketch out a post and then come back to it in a day or so. When I come back and edit the post I will invariably find typos or phrasing that isn’t as clean as I would like. It helps hugely to look at the post multiple times. I don’t mean spending hours pouring over it. Rather, I write it, save it and read through it at another time. If I write in a hurry and publish, there will be errors. If I can let it sit for a day and come back to it, I will usually catch a few typos. Also, I can improve phrasing or move pictures around that don’t look just right. That second reading improves the post almost every time.

Finally, three fascinating and compelling facts about me that you are probably dying to know.

1. My favorite vacation I have taken was my honeymoon in 1998. We went to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. It was breathtakingly gorgeous.

2. My husband and I dated all of six weeks before he proposed. We were married five months later. While I do not recommend this as common practice, we were lucky and are happily married 17 years now. To my children, when they bring this up (usually to give me a hard time about it), I always say, “do as I say, not as I do!” (Which happens to be excellent parenting advice!)

3. I am lucky enough to be the fourth daughter in a family of six girls. My sisters are my dearest friends and you can read about them here, here and here.

Thanks so much for stopping by. If you want to follow me it is easy – you can enter your email address at the top of the page or click on the Bloglovin button (with the plus sign in the middle) and add me to your feed. This blog hop is a wonderful opportunity to meet a host of new bloggers. In the hop with me this week are three other terrific quilt bloggers. Hop on over and check them out!

Nurdan @ Hug-a-bit Quilts

Ali @ Needle Down

Denise @ Craft Traditions

Post 100 – Wow!

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Why do the numbers even matter? I get so excited. I remember hitting 5,000 page views and then 10,000 felt so good. I was so pleased that someone was actually finding this blog and clicking through to read something. This week the number is 100, as in that is how many posts I have written. A nice round 100. Hurray!

The main finish for this week was Junior High! Last night Julia graduated from 8th grade and is now on her way to high school. She looked adorable.

I did have a couple of finishes in the sewing room as well. I made two more of the bunk bed bags that I posted about here. I really like these treasure bags that are made to hang from the rungs of the top bunk. They are great for keeping books, stuffed animals, special blankies or water bottles up on the top bunk. This first one is made of denim and lined with an adorable robot fabric.

The second bag is also made with denim but I used that as the interior fabric. On the exterior there is a great fabric featuring super heroes (boy AND girl superheroes!)

I am especially attached to these because both the superhero and the robot fabric were a gift to me. Last fall my three boys chose these, and many other, fabrics for me as by birthday present. You can check out the details here. I really enjoyed cutting into these pieces.

Both bags are listed in my Etsy shop!

Linking to Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Charitable Donation Winner

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Hi Everyone! Happy Tuesday. Wow, as always, summer came quick. Never fails that the temp jumps from mild to crazy hot in a matter of days around here. We were floating along with lovely 78 degree temps and it is in the high 90’s this week. I am not a fan of hot weather. Makes me ever so grateful for the A/C unit. The older I get, the more I dislike hot weather (thank you menopause.)

One positive side to the heat is that my husband’s berry patch is going crazy. We have blueberries and boysenberries that are ripening and they are so yummy. Right now we are picking about 5 pints daily of the two combined (more boysen’s than blue’s). Ray is all about making jam so I suspect that he will take over the kitchen on Sunday and put up jam. When he does this, I happily become chief bottle washer and he does the rest.

Thanks to everyone who entered my blogiversary celebration giveaway by leaving me a comment about their favorite non-profit. I truly enjoyed reading through each comment and found it interesting to see what everyone holds near and dear to their heart. If you haven’t read the post, I offered to donate $25 to the winner’s favorite charity. My sister, Patti, then piped up with an offer to match my donation, bringing it up to $50. Because, you know, she’s awesome like that. 🙂

And the winner is……….. Number 9, Sarah Goer!! Sarah was one of the first virtual quilty friends I made when I began this blog last summer. A talented quilter and writer, Sarah is also a stay at home mom to two little ones. I enjoy her blog and especially love reading about the projects she does with (and for) her kiddos. Her son (about 5-ish years old) is on his second quilting project already! Do yourself a favor and take a peek at her blog, Things I Make. Sarah left a wonderful comment as an entry to my giveaway. See what you think:

“Happy blogiversary! What a special and unique giveaway. And thank you Patti for contributing as well! The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has a special place in my heart as my friend’s 18-year-old daughter (who I’ve known since she was 2 or 3) is living with CF. She just graduated from high school and is on her way to college. I admire how hard she has worked while also having daily treatments and regular hospital stays to deal with her CF.”

In honor of Sarah’s friend, $50 has been donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation!

Finally, here is a peak at the quilting I am doing on the batik Honeymoon quilt. It is a traditional nine patch pattern with each block being made up of nine 5″ charm squares. The center of each nine patch is a blue square which I quilted with a large flower of one sort or another.

I have all twelve of the flowers done and just started the filler pattern to go around the flowers. I am doing a leafy vine.

It is kind of difficult to see the pattern against this particular batik because is it so busy and leafy. This is the only square I have done so far though. I think I should be able to get this finished up fairly soon. Seems like it is going quickly.

That’s it for now. Wishing each of you a wonderful summery week! The season for iced coffee, iced tea, iced water… get the idea? Stay cool and enjoy.

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks, Sew Cute Tuesday and Freemotion by the River. Links to all of these sites are available at the top of this page, under Link Ups.

Mint Green

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This has been a nice week. Hope the same goes for you. I joined the 2015 New Quilt Bloggers group that is being hosted by Quilting Jetgirl, Childlike Fascination, Late Night Quilter, and Meadow Mist Designs. So far, we are all getting to know each other. There are about 70 bloggers in the group which is a load of blogs to familiarize myself with. I really like the writing style of many of these bloggers and can tell already that this is going to be a fun project. The goal is to work together to improve our blogs. There is always something to be learned from a group such as this. I so appreciate the work of the four bloggers that put this together.

Even with the huge amount of time I spent reading these new blogs, I have a minty green finish this week. I came across a pattern on Pinterest from Canoeridge Creations. I love Megan’s patterns. This is the second one I have used. Her “Fireworks” mini quilt pattern was used for my Allison Glass mini swap. This free pdf pattern is called “Firefly” and it is a fun, quick project. It took no time at all to cut the fabric and piece the top (maybe a little over an hour?)

I had some solid minty green fabric and a large piece of white Kona that looked great together. The pattern is basically a series of stripes. Each color has a set of stripes that decrease one-half inch with each strip. They begin at 5.5 inches and decrease to 2.5 inches. The size of the stripes alternate such that one color begins with the widest and the other color begins with the most narrow. I like the effect.

I felt this quilt did not warrant an all over FMQ pattern. Initially I quilted straight lines on the white stripes. I wanted to keep it soft, thus didn’t want to densely quilt it. Without measuring or marking, I used the walking foot and/or the edges of the strips as my guide. My pin basting wasn’t tight enough and I ended up with huge fold in the backing fabric. Ugh. Ripping out that part of the quilting was really the longest part of making the quilt.

My thought was to quilt the white and leave the green blank. Feeling unsure about that decision, I put it out there to my Facebook quilting community and asked what to do with the green. I really didn’t want the quilt to be dense, I wanted a puffy soft feel to it. Someone suggested doing a very wide, edge to edge zig zag on the green. That was genious. Perfect.

I tried to FMQ the first stripe. I marked it and used the free motion foot. Yuk. I hate quilting straight lines without the (stabilizing) help of the feed dogs. For the rest of the rows I marked them with a Frixion pen and a 90 degree trianglular template that I already had. Using the walking foot, I quickly quilted the zig zags.

The back is a very simple Timeless Treasures print that has the perfect shade of green in it. I bound the quilt with the solid green to retain the simplicity of the quilt top. I listed this quilt in my Etsy shop.

In keeping with my goals for June, I did get the batik quilt (my ALYOF goal) pin basted and plan to start quilting it this weekend. I am using an all-over pattern of a leafy vine from Christina Cameli’s book. Crossing fingers for this one!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Linking to Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts as well as Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

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I can hardly believe it, but today marks one year since I first published my first post on this lovely little blog of mine. This post is my 97th. Who knew I would think of something to say 97 times!! I have had such a fun time this year writing posts, tracking my projects, and best of all, meeting so many friends in this on-line quilting community.

I read a lot of blogs. From food, vintage collecting and thrifting, finance information and investing, to humor and parenting (which should go hand in hand, in my opinion!) there are blogs about anything and everything. However, the quilting community of bloggers is unique. This community is caring, respectful, and supportive. Honestly, this is a great group of people. There are all levels of quilters in the blog world – some are experts with endless talent, many are beginners and everyone has a common love of cutting fabric into bits and creating something from it. The philanthropic and caring nature of this group impresses me no end. I have seen so many situations where another quilter is experiencing a hardship and is immediately supported by quilters as a group. Conversely, when there is reason to celebrate, this community is right there cheering you on.

I am grateful for all that I learned this year. It was nervewracking to publish my first post. I was not at all sure anyone would want to read what I had written. I remember thinking, well, I would have at least six readers (my five sisters and my parents!) Here it is one year later and I have nearly 100 followers. Thank you.

Gratitude also goes to my son, Andrew. He set up this self-hosted blog, does the updates and other miscellaneous tasks needed to keep it running. When I come with questions, can I do this, how do I do that, he is so patient with his explanations. Better yet, he often just makes the changes I want. Take a look at those gorgeous social media buttons on the upper right side of the page. Yep, thank you Andrew!

I am truly grateful for this community. Getting involved with other bloggers has enabled me to improve my quilting skills. The tutorials that are so generously provided and painstakingly written are such a great source of learning material (hah – pun intended!) Just this year, using tutorials, I learned to use a Hera marker for quilting, found cleaner methods for binding my quilts, learned to look at color values when deciding which fabrics to use in a project, and free motion quilting – oh, how thankful I am for the endless posts on FMQ! The many link parties that are hosted each week have provided me with exposure so that readers could find my little blog as well as allowed me to find other blogs that I may never have stumbled across.

It has been a blast and I look forward to my second year! In celebration of this milestone, I wanted to do something special. I considered a giveaway of some sort of fabric but it didn’t seem right. Really, don’t we have enough fabric? Aren’t our shelves bursting with it? Be honest now. 🙂 Instead, let’s celebrate in the giving way that our community is known for. I would like to make a donation to your favorite non-profit. Leave me a comment with a link to your favorite charity. Maybe add one or two lines about the charity. (Who knows, maybe others reading the comments will be intrigued by your charity and get involved.) I will pick one lucky winner and donate $25.00 (USD) to your charity. I am looking forward to reading about the organizations that are near and dear to your heart. This type of giveaway also allows me to include international readers. Previously, I have always included only USA readers in my giveaways because the shipping costs are so expensive. But this giveaway is open to anyone! Just give me the link to contact your non-profit. This giveaway is open until Monday, June 8, 2015. I will announce the winner on Tuesday the 9th. I hope everyone will enter so that your charity has a chance for a donation.

UPDATE: The donation to your favorite charity has just been matched by my sister Patti! She is celebrating my one year blogaversary with me and wants to double the donation. Yay!! This means that $50.00 will be donated to the charity of one lucky winner. Isn’t she the best? See her comment offering to make this match. Thank you Patti!!!

I hope you all know that I am thankful for your readership and even more thankful for your friendship.

Linking to Thankful Thursday at Quilting Jetgirl and Lorna at Let’s Bee Social.

June has arrived

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OK – while it doesn’t really seem possible, June is here. School is on its last legs and summer is around the corner. So crazy. Julia graduates from 8th grade (though this year the administration has quite vehmently changed the terminology from ‘graduation’ to ‘promotion’). Whatever it is called, it is a big change and she will move on to high school in August!

We spent Saturday and Sunday in San Francisco. Even though it is a quick 140 miles from home, we rarely go. This weekend was my daughter-in-law, Naomi’s, graduation from medical school. She is officially a doctor and we couldn’t possibly be more proud of her. She has worked so very hard over the past four years.

The ceremony was touching and, with about 100+ graduates, small enough that we could reallyt enjoy and see everything. Naomi will be starting her residency in Diagnostic Radiology in a few weeks. This will take them to Burlington, Vermont for a good four or five years. I haven’t been to Vermont so this will be a good excuse to visit.

I didn’t accomplish a whole lot in the sewing room last week. I made sure to do a bit of FMQ practice. I am trying hard to fit at least a little practice session in each week. This round was just a quick rectangle (7″x 8″) with a loopy figure eight running side to side. I used a tutorial by Rachel over at Stitched in Color.

This side looks reasonable. I purposely quilted with a light gray thread against the blue so i could see my results clearly. A bit uneven but not too terrible. The other side shows a bit of pulling or uneven speed, whatever it is that gives that “eyelash” effect on the curves. I put an Insul Bright scrap in the middle and bound it off to be used as a hot pad. I even machine stitched both sides of the binding, very quick.

Being the first of June, it is time to link up to Sew Bittersweet Designs for ALYOF. I have one last quilt top to finish up so that is the goal for the month. I made a batik nine patch back in August of last year. (Posted about it here.) I love this top and was sort of waiting until my quilting abilities improved before I put it together. Enough waiting. I am going to finish it this month!! The plan is to free motion it with some sort of all-over pattern.

While that is the main goal, I have others. (Of course I do!) I will make the row for June for my Classic Stitches row quilt. The color is light to medium blue for RSC15 which should be fine. I have quite a lot of blue scrap. Hopefully, I can continue to do a bit of FMQ each week, though quilting the batik quilt will probably make up a few of my practice sessions. Finally, I have a quilt idea that will use some of the 1940’s vintage fabrics that I recently received. I want to use this as a donation quilt for an event in mid-October. At minimum, I need to get the cutting done for that (hopefully I will get some of it pieced though.)

OK, that’s it for me – what’s on your list for June???

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks, ALYOF, Sew Cute Tuesday and Freemotion by the River.

May Goals

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Setting goals on a monthly basis, as I have been doing this year, seems to make the time buzz by even faster. I am not sure this is a good thing. My goals for this month were to finish my Alison Glass Mini Quilt for my first swap, make the row of green blocks for the RSC15 project that I am doing, and to finish two bunk bed bags (a custom order for a friend). Here we are with four days to spare and it is all completed!

It was kind of one of those silver lining deals. I finished the bunk bed bags first (posted about them here). After that I completed the mini quilt. I didn’t think I would get to the Classic Stitches Row Quilt (my RSC15 project) but things are always changing, right? I was supposed to go visit some family in Houston last week but I was knocked flat with a succession of migraines. I ended up not going at the last minute. This was a huge disappointment for me, but certainly wasn’t the first (and won’t be the last) time that I have had to cancel plans due to migraines. Once I was past the worst of it, I was left with a couple of unexpected days to sew (that is the silver lining!) I cut into a pile of green scrap and came up with a row of Losses and Crosses blocks which were the Classic Stitches BOM for May.

I made the simpler version of the blocks that Mari offered up for this month. These blocks are a bit fussy and I decided I could only make so many 2″ HST’s without going crazy. I like the blocks though I think they are better suited to a larger layout so that the secondary patterns show up. You don’t get the full effect in one row of six inch blocks. If they are clustered together, the effect is very nice.

This row quilt is growing and growing. I am trying to decide if I want to keep making all of the rows with six inch blocks or if I should make some rows with larger blocks to add variation. I need to decide this soon since I am nearly half done.

The mini quilt turned out great. Very glad to have this finished and also that I am able to link up with ALYOF since I missed that boat in April! I just packed it up to ship it off to my partner in Michigan. Kind of hard to gIve it up so I really hope she love it! I am excited to see what sort of mini I will receive.

I have quite a bit of Alison Glass fabric so I made a pieced back for it.

I love the dense quilting.

My points match up well which I am quite proud of. I have been working on precision and it is finally improving.

Looks like it is time to think about what to work on in June! I have several things in process so it will help to block it out and make a plan.

Linking up with Lorna at Let’s Bee Social and Amanda Jean at Finish It Up Friday, as well as ALYOF at Sew Bittersweet Designs and Angela at So Scrappy.

Free Motion Monday

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I have been spending more time practicing my free motion quilting skills. I really want to be more competent with the FMQ part of the quilting process and the only way to get there is what? Practice, practice, practice. It is tough because the time I can spend quilting, like most people, is limited by regular life. When I spend time practicing my FMQ, I am not making!! It doesn’t feel as productive as piecing, binding, FINISHING something. Possibly I am a bit too goal oriented at times, you think? At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to focus more on the process, rather than rushing to the finish. This is a great exercise in being more process focused.

Last week I was working from Christina Cameli’s book and practicing filler patterns. This week I decided to find a larger motif and then use filler around it. I grabbed some solid green fabric that I had thrifted a while back, some batting and plain muslin for the backing. Making a sandwich and pinning it together, I tried to think of what I wanted to quilt on it. I turned to Pinterest, the source of so many ideas. I came across a sunflower that looked pretty, and more importantly, like something I could accomplish. The inspiration came from Amy at Freemotion Quilting Adventures. This site is a wonderful collection of all sorts of helpful information for those learning to FMQ, as well as those that are just expanding their skills.

I did the flower first and then started looking for a background filler. A great source for ideas is Lori Kennedy’s site, The Inbox Jaunt. She is an amazingly prolific quilter and is very generous in sharing tutorials and patterns for different fillers as well as motifs. I saw her tutorial on the grid pop motif and decided that would be a fun one to try. I drew diagonal lines and double stitched each line. To gain the pop effect, every other line of diamonds is filled in. The effect is great!

For this project, I made a conscious decision not to worry about perfection. My tension was making me crazy and after doing the usual, re-threading, cleaning out the bobbin space, rewinding the bobbin, I let it go. This isn’t a gift, it isn’t for sale, it is practice. I want more time quilting and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It is more about gaining that muscle memory to make it that much easier the next time.

Looking at the back of the piece, you can see the tension issues.

Overall, I love the end result. I even faced it so that I can use it. Currently I have it sitting on my hutch and the sunflower and popping grid make me smile. It is a good sense of accomplishment. I am already looking at ideas for this week’s practice session! Hope everyone has a wonderful week.

Linking to Monday Makers, Freemotion by the River and later this week, will link to Freemotion Mavericks.

Practicing Some FMQ

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I treated myself to a new book last week. I love it. Written by Christina Cameli, it is full of simple ideas for free motion quilting patterns. Christina blogs over at A Few Scraps and I have been following her for quite some time. She creates such lovely quilts and her blog is filled with great information. The patterns in this book are based on common shapes like circles and wavy lines. She then expands on those shapes, creating many different free motion shapes.

When I first got the book, I started to doodle and draw shapes on paper. Some were really easy, others weren’t. Once I got the hang of doodling the designs, I wanted to practice with actual thread! I made a simple nine patch block, using 6.5″ squares. I thought I would quilt each square with a different pattern.

The quilting is far from perfect but I really enjoyed playing with this. The stitches are fun.

Both of these flower patterns were fun to stitch.

My favorite stitch so far is the one below. I will definitely use it in a project. It is a bit time consuming but I like the effect.

My only disappointment with the book is a minor one. I had hoped there would be some discussion of how to integrate some of the patterns together. She doesn’t touch on that. I know that is a strength of hers as she is great at using all sorts of patterns together. I was looking for some information on that but it isn’t included in the book. Overall, the book makes it so fun to practice because the patterns are broken down into easy steps. I highly recommend it if you are in the market for a little FMQ practicing!!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Freemotion Mavericks. Links to these sites are always available at the top of this page, under Link Ups.