2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - January

I've decided to try to learn how to FMQ for real this year. 2012 - my year of FMQ! Since I tried Free Motion Quilting for the first time ever in February last year, having one years "base practice" with it feels good now when I embark on learning it for real.

An important step in the right direction was that I decided to participate in the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge over at SewCalGal's.  Januarys challenge has been posted and this months teacher is Frances Moore  I like her no marking approach, since I have no patience whatsoever - it suits me well =) 


This month we are learning an all over leaf design, I really quite like it, it's easy (what girl don't have how to draw a heart shape worked into her bones from school?) and it's multi directional and quite easy to get the hang of and most importantly - quite forgiving. I did attempt sketching it on a paper first, however, my patience being zero and like I said, I'd been doodling hearts for years in my school books growing up I went pretty much directly to my machine. 

I set up my machine as always using my home made "Teflon slider sheet" and just played away. It's a fun pattern and it was quite pain free to make and I quite quickly got a fairly comfortable flow to it. 
I however quickly decided that I preferred to not add the stem in the end but instead start with the stem, and then go back up and do the heart shape as that way I prevented as much as possible getting that "bump" or "knot" of thread at the top of the leaf. 

Here's my second attempt, the first one was white thread on white fabric, not ideal for photography XD

Here I rocked loose a little and went a little crazy with the leaf shapes, wasn't very happy with the result through...

I've had such precious little time to sew again lately as work is taking up all my days (and nights and whatever is in between) but I hope I'll have time to practice this pattern for real a bit more later, I just really wanted to get this post up before January has past - as months tend to do that to me lately.