Category Archives: Free Motion Quilting

TBT – Class with Carol Taylor

First of all, just know that it is raining as I type this post. That makes me so happy!!

Today I thought I would share about a class I took with Carol Taylor back in spring of 2013. If you aren’t familiar with Carol, she is an extremely talented quilt artist from New York. She works on quilts that are often abstract and are always beautiful. Her talent with thread is beyond belief. If you are unfamiliar with her work, check out her gallery. It is a treat to look through.

One day (a long while back) I was looking at the website for my LQS and there was a post about a class with Carol Taylor coming soon. At first I didn’t think much of it because it didn’t seem possible that this Carol was the same Carol whose site I had looked at so many times. Then I saw the description of the class and was thrilled to see that it was her. Wondering how the heck our tiny guild could afford to bring her out, I called the shop. Apparently, we had partnered up with a guild about an hour away and the two guilds were splitting her travel expenses which made it just barely affordable.

I was very hesitant to sign up though. I felt like the class was out of my league and it was also fairly spendy for my budget. I talked to my husband and he encouraged me to go. I really wanted to just learn from her at whatever level I could, even if I wasn’t quite up to speed on the techniques. I am so glad I did becasue it was fantastic!

At the last minute, I talked one of my friends into going with me. There was a woman that had signed up and was ill so her spot was up for grabs. This was the second quilting class I had ever taken and I was more than a little unprepared for it. When Sophia (my friend that went with me) and I entered the room it was obvious that we were newbies. We both came with a tote bag of supplies and fabric, plus our machines. Yikes, the other women there had (literally) suitcases and duffel bags filled with fabric. They had large boxes, or kits, filled with needles, thread choices, mysterious feet for their sewing machines etc. I was overwhelmed. I brought exactly what the supply list said, no more than that.

After lecturing for a bit, Carol had us get out the colors we wanted to use for the background. I had about five fat quarters. She came by and actually asked me where the rest was. I was baffled. Then she said to the class, “we need greens over here” and it was like the story of the ‘Loaves and the Fishes’. Twenty women started to hunt through their fabric, pulling out greens of every shade. This was really my first exposure to the kindness of the quilting community. I ended up with plenty. 🙂 We started cutting strips and playing with them.

One of Carol’s strengths is her use of color and that is something that I have mentioned struggling with. She was so helpful. When she looked at my first choices (above) she explained there wasn’t enough value difference. Working together, and using donations from classmates, I finally ended up with my backgound. The lightest solid green is a gorgeous silk given to me that adds a wonderful texture to the collection.

Beyond learning about value, I learned about design and free-form applique. I wanted to make a wall hanging that was inspired by some pictures of Coleus plants that I had brought to class. She had me cut huge leaves with my rotary cutter without drawing them or making any sort of pattern. It worked great and was so much fun. (I wish I had taken pictures of the process but this was long before blogging so I don’t really have any.) Below is the end result of the class. I did have to finish much of this at home. By the end of the two day class, I had the background done and the leaves in place. It wasn’t quilted and much of the thread sketching down the center of the leaves was incomplete.

One of my favorite aspects of the quilt is the little point of the petal that hangs below the finished edge. Carol suggested this and it worked perfectly. There is a cute story behind the idea. As a well-known artist, many of Carol’s quilts hang in different shows and galleries. She had made a quilt that she wanted to enter in a show and it was 1/2″ short of the size requirement. The show held firm on their size requirement so Carol added a tiny fish that hangs off of the edge of the quilt. They took her entry. You can see a photo of this on my Flikr page. Carol did a fantastic trunk show and was kind enough to let us take pictures.

This class was actually my first exposure to thread play. We used Sulky threads (which she sold in class in every color of the rainbow.) I love the veins that are sketeched in the center of the petals.

I also learned to incorporate texture with simple ideas such as cutting the center of some of the petals to show the green behind it as the center vein.

When I was ready to quilt it I used a different FMQ pattern in each of the green fabrics, repeating the pattern wherever that particular color strip was used.

With a faced edge, rather than regular binding, the quilt finished out at 28″ wide by 25″ tall (including the tip of the leaf!)

This class was such a fantastic learning experience. If ever you have the opportunity to take a class with Carol, I cannot emphasize this enough – Do it! She has such talent and is a very good instructor as well.

Linking to Let’s Bee Social, Throwback Thursday and Crazy Mom Quilts.

TBT Except It’s Saturday

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I have been reading posts that are linked up to a party hosted by Jen at Quarter Inch From the Edge this week and really enjoying them. (I also enjoy the name of Jen’s blog, isn’t it perfect?). She has been hosting a monthly link up where bloggers are sharing projects from earlier days and I love seeing how far everyone has come with their skill and creativity. Really interesting to read the posts and check out the pictures. Most of my earlier projects have been posted about already but I did think it would be fun to share the Tablerunner Craze of 2012.

The fall of 2012 was when the quilting bug really bit. I had recently finished a queen size simple patchwork quilt for my mother-in-law. I posted that story here. When I was finishing up that quilt, I had no clue how to FMQ so I stitched in the ditch along every block. Once that was finished, I really wanted to try some free motion quilting so I took a class at my LQS to learn the basics. Table runners seemed like the perfect opportunity to practice this newfound love. Glad for the excuse to shop, I shopped for holiday fabric so I could make table runners for my family as Christmas gifts. If you have been a reader for any length of time, you probably know I have a huge family. I made eight table runners in about a month’s time. One for each of my five sisters, one for my mom and my mother-in-law, and one for myself.

This was long before I started blogging and I am happy I thought to take a quick picture of some of them before giving them away. Definitely last minute pictures. I remember I was about to wrap them and get them in the mail and I tossed them over the back of the couch and took a picture with my phone. (Hence the superb quality of the pictures!) Here are three of the runners.

I did a basic, squiggly meander over the entire runner. Mitred bindings were not yet in my wheelhouse so the corners were just folded over and stitched (machine stitched to the front and hand stitched to the back? Maybe, maybe not….)

Here are three more.

These runners are on the small side. They are probably 13″ wide and maybe 30″ long? They were pretty though and I enjoy looking back at them. They were definitely my first foray into free motion quilting. Actually, it kind of amazes me that this was almost exactly four years ago. The time continues to buzz by.

We are spending the long weekend up at our Downieville house. It is gorgeous up here with crisp, cool air. If you live in California, you are probably hearing about this tremendous El Nino that is supposed to happen this year. Ray is cleaning all of the drainage paths and gutters this weekend. If it comes to be, then we could get some substantial storms this year. I am grateful that he is so good about preparing for this sort of thing. Our Downieville house is is a flood zone being so close to the river so we do need to be careful. At any rate, maybe this year will put an end to four years of drought. Here’s hoping!

Linking to Quarter Inch From the Edge (for the very first time!)

Basic and Practical

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Here is a post about one of the least exciting things I have made thus far. Today I made a little mat to place under my dog’s water dish. I hate the puddles that happen when she drinks (and more often than that, when I kick the dish as I walk by it – like every. single. day.) It wasn’t that I didn’t try to control the issue. Look at this gorgeous set up I had going on.

Classy, right? (Please avert your eyes from the dirty floor. Thank you.)

My true goal was to learn to quilt a basic “orange peel” motif. It is one that I had not yet tried and seemed like a good one to add to my limited repetoire. I didn’t look for a tutorial and didn’t sketch any first. It just seemed so easy. Silly, silly me. Drawing first has huge benefits as will become clear in a sec.

First I found a pile of 3 and 1/2″ squares that were left over from various projects. I added a few extra squares cut from puppy themed novelty fabric that was in my stash. I made a patchwork of five squares across and four down. I found a scrap of french terry to back it with so it would have the absorbency to handle my constant kicking and splashing of the water. (One would think moving the bowl to another location would be much simpler!) I sewed the two pieces, right sides together, leaving a small opening to turn it right side out. After stitching the opening shut, I pressed it and pinned it. Then I just dove in with the quilting process.

The problem was I didn’t really think about how to travel along with the orange peels. Mostly I was listening to music and not focusing on the exciting task at hand. I began by moving around the inside of each square. This doesn’t work and I was almost immediately stuck in the corner. Ahh… of course. The pattern is supposed to be stitched along the length of each row of squares and then again along the opposite edges of the squares (e.g. along the vertical rows and then the horizontal rows – or vice versa.) Very basic and had I sketched for just a few minutes first, this would have been apparent right away. No big loss though. This was easily remedied and I finished up by stitching along the edges. Once I figured it out my curves looked (somewhat) better.

The quilting on this is mediocre at best. Fortunately I have a rather undiscerning dog when it comes to quality of the FMQ on her water mat. It does look better from the back (because there isn’t the point of reference of the squares to look at next to my stitching.) Quilting along the perimeter was really tough because there was no edge to hold on to (since I had just made this “envelope style”.)

I really love how the orange peel motif looks (when done well!) and plan to practice it further. It would be very easy to quilt a larger project with this pattern. I would want to have a better handle on it first though. This little mat certainly improves the look of the water station in the kitchen though! Very classy. I am sure the dog is grateful.

Have you been enjoying the Fabri-Quilt New Bloggers Block Hop so far this week? I have seen some amazing creativity out there. The hop continues through Thursday. The Tuesday group can be found over at Meadow Mist Designs with Cheryl leading the crew.

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks and Freemotion by the River.

A Vintage Finish

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Looks like I made it, and with a few days to spare! My ALYOF goal for August was to quilt and bind my vintage double nine patch quilt. Yahoo for setting goals.

I had asked readers to suggest ideas for quilting the vintage quilt and was happy to receive tons of suggestions. Thanks so much for the ideas. I decided to quilt a basic cross-hatch over the main nine-patch blocks. Then I wanted to do something different with each of the three borders. My original thought was to do different cable patterns so I bought a couple of cable stencils.

Alas, it wasn’t entirely successful. I started by doing a basic, single cable on the middle (narrowest) border. I had great help with tracing the stencil. Ian was home for the weekend and kindly traced for me.

Try as I might, I couldn’t relax and just stitch. I wanted to use my walking foot, maybe that was the mistake? The stitching isn’t fluid and I am less than pleased with it. Hoping that a run through the wash (in my NEW washing machine) will make the jitters a bit less obvious.

Because of the issues with the single cable, I lost interest in doing a more complex cable pattern so I put the stencils away in the deepest recesses of my desk drawer. I don’t plan on looking at them for quite some time. Instead, I played with some motifs that Lori Kennedy has posted over at The Inbox Jaunt. I chose her Modern Leaf pattern (which I posted about earlier this week.) Because I am susceptible to this sort of nonsense, I wondered if I should use a motif with the word “Modern” in it when I was really trying to go for a vintage look. Jeez… I need to get over myself already. It worked out fine and was very fun to quilt. Because I did the quilting with cream colored Mettler thread, it is hard to see in the pictures. But I am much happier with it than the single cable. (I love the fabric with those little pins. Really cute.)

For the final, outside border I did basic straight-line quilting which I just eyeballed using the side of the walking foot. Simple and clean. I backed it with a blue print and as you can see, I used one of the cream background fabrics as the binding.

One small concern that came to mind is that I have a six inch gap between stitching lines on the cross-hatch. The batting said I could space the quilting with as much as an eight inch gap. However this is likely the widest I have gone and it seems sketchy to me. Any input on that? I could still add lines to the body of the quilt if need be. If I split the difference between the existing lines, I would have a three inch gap. Thanks for any ideas you might have.

Overall, I am happy with the finish. This is a more traditional quilt than I normally make but I enjoyed it. My next project is more modern and uses Kaffe Fassett yardage and jelly roll. I am chomping at the bit to get started on it so stay tuned.

Linking to my favorites: Let’s Bee Social, Finish it up Friday, and Sew Bittersweet Designs. Take a peek at these sites – there is a lot of great work out there!

Anticipation

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I am sitting here waiting for the delivery of my new washing machine.If you could have heard the noise made during the final spin cycle, you would have no trouble imagining my anticipation for this wonderful event. It sounded like jets were leaving the runway. The floor shook as the machine rumbled. The sound grew louder with each load of wash. I called to see about having this fixed, assuming that they could just replace the bad bearing or whatever was failing. But the service technician asked how old the washing machine was (ten years old) and told me that it wasn’t worth fixing it. The average lifespan of a washer is about ten years these days. Planned obsolescence – don’t even get me started. Remembering back, I am fairly certain my mom had one washer for the duration of my childhood.

While shopping for a new machine, I asked the salesperson if there was a washer that would hold up for longer than the estimated ten years. He said, sure – this one over here will last 15 or so. Of course it was expensive enough that I could just buy another one in ten years and still spend the same amount. Irritating. So, I am just waiting for the delivery guys to show up and heave that beast up the two flights of stairs on my deck and install it. I have a pile of laundry waiting right here with me. Exciting times, right?

Over the weekend (since I wasn’t doing laundry) I practiced my FMQ. I wanted a larger fabric sandwich to practice on as I was doing a leafy border motif and wanted to figure out how to turn the corner. For me, it is really a challenge to plan the motif and be at the right point in the design to make that turn. I cannot visualize things like that in my head, yet I prefer to quilt without tracing a design. When I stitch over a tracing of a design, my stitches wobble. Don’t ask me why. If I had to make a supposition, it would be that my mind becomes focused on that dang traced line. Without the line, my stitches flow much better. This corner isn’t great. I don’t like that harsh right angle on the vine. But the leaves worked out ok.

I do like the motif. I found this Modern Leaf tutorial via Lori Kennedy’s incredible website, The Inbox Jaunt. I have mentioned her before, but really, if you are working on your FMQ skills, I cannot recommend her enough. Her site offers tons of tutorials and many, many different motifs. It is definitely worth taking a peek at all she has to offer.

Lori is a huge proponent of doodling and drawing the motif before actually stitching it. I did several pages of practice drawings. (Drawing is not my forte, not in the slightest.) However, the practice of making those hand motions using pencil and paper definitely transfers to an increased muscle memory of that pattern. It helps!

When I was putting the fabric sandwich together, I didn’t want to waste a large scrap of batting. I have a whole drawer full of many straggly lengths (often from trimming the edges off of a project after quilting it). I have taken to stitching these pieces together (frankenbatting style). Have you tried this? I have never had any issue with it. Mainly I do it for smaller projects, but I have read posts from many quilters who have done it to gain larger sizes as well.

I use a fairly wide zig zag stitch with only a hint of overlap of the two lengths of batting. To avoid a lump along that line of stitching, it is best to just hold the two lengths as close together as possible without much of an overlap. This is a great way to use up those piles of batting scraps.

Today I plan to finish up the quilting on the vintage double nine patch. I have one border left and I will use this leaf motif. My binding strips are ready to go. Looks like I will have a finish this week!!

How about you? Working on anything fun this week?? Ever pieced your batting scraps? Do tell. 🙂

Linking to Freemotion by the River, Sew Cute Tuesday, Freemotion Mavericks, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict (who by the way is having a giveaway to celebrate her 1,000,000 VIEW!! That is worthy of celebrating!! The giveaway is open until Thursday of this week.)

Honeymoon Quilt Finish

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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.

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.

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.

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.