Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Free Motion Quilting


I've committed to the Free Motion Quilting Challenge at Sew Cal Gal.  The January tutorial is by Frances Moore and involves heart shaped leaves.
  Since I already had a practice piece on the machine, I added some large sections of these leaves.  The heart shapes came easily to me, but I really had to work at making sure the leaves were pointing different directions.

I need to make up my mind on how I'm going to do the sampler...I keep thinking that I may add other blocks and try more than 12 designs.
My hubby bought me Leah Day's From Daisy To Paisley and From Feathers To Flames for Christmas.    This section of the panel shows Pom Pom Parade done in pale blue with Frances' leaves above and below.

Modern Art (kind-of)

Paisley

some random square stippling

Tree Bark

Circuit Board

What started as Bubble Wand but I added and extra wands.

Spirals

Pebble Paisley

Echo Arches

I have learned several things with this set of stitches. 1) I really like designs with pebbles.
2) I am happiest about both the stitch length and the design shape when the repeat is 2 inches or less (like all the Paisley variations and Echo Arches).
I believe this is related to the fact that I don't have a machine table  or extension which means I have 3 inches to the left, 2 in front and 6 to the right of the needle in which to place my fingers to steer the fabric.

I'm off to change back to the walking foot so I can do a simple & fast straight line stitching on $2.25 Plus Tax, the quilt to which this sampler pillow case will belong.

14 comments:

Marj said...

Looks like you are having fun. Will be watching to see what your quilting sampler turns out to be.

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

Wow!!! Looks like you don't need any more practice..lovely quilting.

Archie The Wonder Dog said...

Your quilting is fantastic and I can't wait to see how your sampler turns out!

beaquilter said...

you did great, and even though I long arm, I bought both of Leah's books too, very inspiring :-)

Renate said...

Looks like you've been have quite a bit of fun! Need to go and check out Leah's books.

Lynne said...

I'm taking my first FMQ class with Kim Bradley at my local LYS on 18th January - I'm really looking forward to it.

Frances Moore said...

Wow! Wonderful work. Frances Moore

Frederique said...

Great work!

Annemart Berendse said...

Hi Marjorie, you are doing a great job! Love what you made.

quilthexle said...

Your quilting looks just great! I plan to do this challenge, too - my free motion quilting could use some tuning ... guess I should better start !!!

sew.darn.quilt said...

awesome work

Carolyn

Pat said...

All of your quilting looks great! I have to really work hard to sew my heart shaped leaves in all directions too. I have Leah's Daisy to Paisley too. It was a big help for getting me started with free motion quilting.

M and M plus 3 said...

Look at you go with your fmq'ing challenge. I did some today myself.

Kay Lynne said...

Your FMQ looks great!