Free Motion Quilting Challenge for June

Well, I kind of cut this one a little close to the wire (it being the afternoon of the last day of the month) - but I got it done (I really have been working on it all week!) and it was fun!  And thanks so much to our hostess, SewCalGal, and our wonderful teacher, Cindy Needham for this months tutorial.

In this month's lesson, we not only learned several new fills and shapes, but we learned how to divide and conquer a large, empty space using a zentangle-like flowing line (all while working towards that sweet humm/purr on our machines).

Step one, for me, was to sketch out some of the new ideas, to make sure my brain and hands understood how they were constructed and how they could be used.

I started out by seeing some ways in which a curving line could be the foundation for other shapes (top left) and tried out a few circles (pebbles), s-curves (ferns), and paislies.  

Then on top right, I played with repetitive lines and the various grids and grid divisions in the lesson and in the pictures of Cindy's work.  

Bottom left is seeing how feathers can be made to fill a shape.

And bottom right is my sketch of ideas for division/subdivision/fill of the swoopy swirl blank from the lesson.

Then I started stitching!  First, a practice square of some of the new ideas:

Circles/Pebbles were the hardest for me!  I could not stitch a circle to save my life (and to go over it a second time was crazy!), so this one's going to take a bit of practice!  

And the small squares with the flower-like/circle-like curves - I don't know what happened to me there!

On the other hand, repetitive lines are great fun and the grids are useful, and s-curves are a delight (though I need to work on my spacing a bit), and I think I'm even getting a little better at the free form feathers.

And then I had a go at the swoopy swirl - I've left the blue pen marks on there to show what guide lines were used (all the rest is improvised).

This is the top, and the photo at the top of this post is the back (on black fabric - with a few thread nests, oh well).  50 wt. Guterman cotton thread, 80/11 needles, Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.

What a great lesson!  So much fun I want to keep playing!