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.

Baby Crawling Mat

My dear friends had a baby this summer, adorable baby Alessandra! 
She's now big enough to start rolling around and they apparently had been searching high and low for a big, square rolling/crawling mat, something soft enough to make sure she doesn't hurt her head when she drops it on the tiles and with a little edge so she doesn't roll off ^^ 

So they asked me if I could make one and of course I could! So I went out with her father and he got to choose the fabrics, isn't it adorable, one fluffy brown side and one with bright pink fleece. The fleece is quilted together with the batting in lines. Bought some polyester batting at the same store and please kill me if I ever do that again, it was absolutely TERRIBLE to work with! It stretched and pulled and as you can see on the lines, horrible to work with despite the most serious pin basting I've ever done. And on another note, we bought and paid for 2 meters of each fabric and got home with less then 160 of one and 180 of the other...

Got this photo in a text the other day from a happy father with a satisfied little lady on her mat. =)

Gift for my landlady

We have a lovely landlady, if there's anything wrong she fixes it the same or next day, if we need anything at all, she get's it for the apartment, she doesn't even let us change or pay for the light bulbs ourselves, she's the best! So I really wanted to give her a Christmas gift this year, a small one to not make her feel weird but still something made especially for her =)

So I ended up making her a Fancy Folded Star pot holder inspired by Barb's version of them and an oven mitt, using this tutorial from Prudent Baby. I ended up using some of my Ruby by Bonnie & Camille FQ's with a touch of Bliss thrown in. The M appliqué I just traced from an alphabet on my screen. =)

She really loved them and I'm so happy! I'm however not happy with the binding on either but I was under a lot of time press, otherwise I would totally have redone it.

On a personal side note, I finally have a hard drive again! Yay!

Quilting for sanity

I'm still without a working computer (don't get me started on OCZ's customer treatment, service level or quality of hardware for that matter or I'll go on for three pages) I'm quilting for my sanity from time to time when the work I need to do can't be done without say PS or access to a hard drive.

So I had time to whip up some quick Christmas gifts for my amazing landlady whom I haven't seen since before the holidays so it's ok (will try to sneak some time to share those photos in a day or so as I can't exactly use my precious "real computer time" for anything but work right now as Andreas too is super busy). But I can however share  a photo I took this fall of some fabric which still hasn't been turned into the super yummy baked goods it was supposed to be due to my insanely busy work schedule. I'm super embarrassed by this situation but luckily the lovely Moda peeps are so understanding <3

I have however started it now and I'm hoping to have it turned into something amazing in a month and a half or so =)

It's Twirl by My & My Sister Designs, such happy and completely insane colors, you can't help but smile when working with them =)