2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - June

I had to quilt some more feathers, they're truly addicting! I love how fun they are to do! Diane Gaudynski really changed my quilting life with her tutorial just as Sewcalgal is doing with this challenge, thanks again! <3

So I went in and dove head first into the June challenge. It was by Cindy Needham and contained a LOT of information. She does amazing quilting and I think I will come back to some of the stuff she talked about. However, for me personally, it was too much text and to many areas covered in the same tutorial for me to feel 100% about it. Please don't get me wrong, I LOVE to read and I love to learn new things, it's just that when I read a tutorial, I want it to explain what I need to know fairly straight to the point, and this felt a bit too open ended.

It was also quite hard for me to do as I'm no fan of the Zentangle thing that's so popular right now, to much crazy going on, no organization and no order... But I really want to embrace each and every challenge so I tried to go at it with an open mind.

I really don't like the outcome (too much stuff going on) but I do like the idea of solving the issue of to much blank space by sub dividing it. Plus it was really fun to do so much tiny quilting and so many different things at once. And it was also really good for me I think to have to do something that was completely out of my comfort zone when it came to design. =)

I'll be honest with you and admit that I skipped the sketching part again. I have too precious little time in front of the machine as it is and I didn't want to waste any of it that could be spent with thread and needle on pen and paper. I've spent a lot of my time growing up doodling so I thought I had most of the element's she mentioned pretty much embedded in my muscle memory anyway.


It was also fun to learn that I was already doing with microstitches to the stop and going when quilting was the longarm quilter way. I had no idea ^^

I'm really enjoying this challenge, I just wish I had a lot more time to practice!

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On the topic of quilting, I thought I'd also show you some of my quilting test blocks for my Periodic Table Quilt. Please excuse the sloppy look of the quilting, it's just test blocks and I just wanted to see the effects. Here you can also see a few of all the incorrect elements I had to replace. In a way it was good as I did about 6 of these test blocks of 4 until I had decided on what I wanted to do.

My original idea was to outline the letters to get them to pop, a good idea in theory, not so much in reality. And then I tried a ton of different versions before I decided on the outlined block instead of letters and then a simple all over stipple to not distract from the lettering and be sure I got the same density of quilting all over.

The end result as you've seen ^^

2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - February

February in July you ask? Better late then never right?

I've wanted to be able to quilt feathers freehand since I first saw them on a quilt. It was the dream, the ultimate FMQ goal. Well, I may not be there yet but I am a whole lot closer then I was before this tutorial. I've been looking forward to trying it since I saw it, Diane Gaudynski sure made it look easy enough ^^ I really LOVED her tutorial! Super easy to follow thanks to very clear pictures and just the right amount of text that you would actually read it all (otherwise I always skim, I'm a bad girl), but still feel you've gone in depth on the subject

Luckily, it wasn't as difficult as I had feared! It's not easy and I do have a lot of practice to go before I'll be happy with my feathers, but at least, it's one of those "terrified to even try" things I can cross of my list!

 My brain is not made for echo quilting! I was really bored after the first round back from the feathers... And it shows. But it does give a pretty cool effect.

I really like making feathers though and there's a lot of fun stuff I'm dying to try, like the branched feathers, more swirls and twirls, leafs and tendrils. But unfortunately, work doesn't permit much play at the sewing machine atm so I figured I'd settle with the above, my second attempt to show you. I really hope I'll have time to play some more with feathers soon though.

This was my first attempt, I actually prefer the more regular shape of the feathers like the ones here I think, then the more crazy ones I did for my second attempt above.

If you haven't taken the pledge yet, it's not to late, you can join up any time during the year to become a better free motion quilter and have the chance to win fabulous prizes!!  

2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - April

So I've been practicing my Free Motion Quilting for the challenge a bit lately as time hasn't permitted any real projects (apart from trying to finish my secret big project which isn't at a sewing stage yet) and I'd go crazy without sewing anything but buttons into my finances pants and mending trousers.

I really liked this months tutorial by the very skilled Don Linn aka "Mr Quilt", it had a some valuable tips and the tulle transfer technique looks very clever I have to say! The only thing though is that I honestly wished the video would have been a touch shorter (like having the design partly per-drawn) as I tended to skip ahead the first time I watched it to get to the "good parts" and then ended up having to re-watch it to make sure I hadn't missed anything important.

I've been meaning to do this months FMQ challenge in full but after trying I can't get my hands on any tulle at this point in time nor an embroidery hoop (would have to order from abroad) so I figured I'd try some of the techniques, practice sewing in the same lines back and also practice FMQing quilting a per-drawn design and count it as this months challenge even if I didn't do the tulle-transfer part. I now know how to do it and once I get the equipment, I'll absolutely try it because it seems like an great technique as I could never mark a quilt before basting it!

I used a tutorial from Judi over at Green Fairy Quilts to draw the star and then I gave it my own little twist to get some of the rounded edges from this months tutorial in there too. =) It wouldn't show up very nicely on the front in the photo, hence the main image being of the batting/back. To get it to match my other pillow I'll also make some swirls around the edges before it's done.

2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - March

I'm alive! Work has been killing me again, we've celebrated our first game, PonyIsland's 8th birthday on the 13th of March and I couldn't be more excited! It was a ton of work and fun, we had contests and lots of updates and releases replaced the last pieces of the game that was actually 8 years old =)

We're also starting to settle in our new apartment and better late then never - I've unpacked my sewing room! Naturally I celebrated with some free motion quilting! =)

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Regarding the challenge, I skipped February for now, the month I was most excited about so far, those beautiful feathers are still haunting me!  I really hope I'll be able to come back to it soon and do it as I so badly want to learn how to do them.

This months tutorial was by the talented Ann Fahl, and it was a shout out to us to encourage more creative filler designs then the common stippling and meandering =)

She gave us a number of designs to try and I have to say I felt very comfortable with all of them from the beginning, and again I skipped the sketching part and went straight to the machine (naughty me!), and especially now after my long forced break from my beloved Horizon it felt like being back where I belong. I was so happy to be quilting again!

My first attempt at the designs she suggested:

Since I hadn't quilted in a while I at first forgot to use my "home made teflon slider" sheet and in this image you can really see what a huge difference it makes! The first little section in the rectangle was quilted before I realized why my technique was so poor all of a sudden! You can clearly see how much better and even my quilting became after I got my sheet in place and my little sandwich  didn't drag and snag =)

I really liked the swirls a lot and the extension design of them, the flowers where really fun too, can totally see myself using these in the future. 

I will practice it a more, I just really wanted to get my post up before  the month was over this time =)

EDIT: So I had to play some more with this months challenge and ended up breaking out my drunkards path templates for the very first time and whipped up what's going to become two pillow's with some of my Ruby, so I'd have something "real" to try it on. Drunkards path was sooo much easier to make then I'd feared, it's so much fun to sew curves! =D
This is my first one, still contemplating what to do for borders. I got a lot of inspiration from Judi over at Green Fairy Quilts for this with her intricate and wonderfully free quilting style:

Unfortunately the light was disappearing so the photos are not the best, will quilt some more and try to upload more soon. I was really good and didn't unpick a single stitch, despite my fingers itching when it went a little of track =)

If you haven't taken the pledge yet, it's not to late, you can join up now to become a better free motion quilter and have the chance to win fabulous prizes!!  

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.