Friday, January 20, 2012

FMQ Project's "Quilt Along Wednesdays" - first two lessons

In The Free Motion Quilting Challenge, there was a link to "Quilt Along Wednesdays" which led me to a rather fabulous blog and an amazing quilter - Leah Day.   Check out her 365 days of Free Motion Quilting Filler DesignsWow!  Not just fun designs, but clear and generous instructional videos as well! 

And now she's sharing her expertise and experience in a series of lessons/tutorials for us beginners!  First up was stippling, the basic background filler everyone should learn, and here are my rows of practice. 

Not a bad start.  I like rows, they're easy (easier, maybe).  Bottom "row" is more fill-like and starts to get a little weird (do you see the strange animals?).  Oh well.

Second lesson was about working in a quadrant pattern (here's the illustration from her blog, so you know what I'm talking about - the arrows show the direction of quilting).  


I tried it out with a heart shaped leaf pattern first (see my previous post) which was really fun, and then I went back and stitched a stippled sample.

My little dotted blue lines are still there, so you can see the path of stitching.  I wanted to have the beginning and end join up, so instead of starting in the center, I started in the middle of the right side (you can see the starting dot and the awkward join.  Oh well).  My stippling isn't as fluid as I'd like it to be - I think I need to relax and get wigglier (and practice more!), but I'm happy with my thread tension, and I'm happy with my progress, and I'm having fun!

And next lesson will be working with size/scale - how appropriate after my varied leaf sizes in my last post!

And why two posts in one day?  Well, we're still snowed in and unlike many people in the Northwest, we still have electricity!

2 comments:

  1. Lookin' good! I don't know about you, but its a lot to think about when you are stippling. I never realized how had it would be....it looks so easy. But we gotta figure out when to twist, and turn, all while stitching at a pretty good speed! Whew!And I'm kinda jealous, I would love to be snowed in WITH electricity! Sounds nice.

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  2. I'm a beginner at fmq too. Leah's qal is totally fabulous. Isn't it such a relief to have the thread tension working well!!! I am so glad to see how someone else handled the start point, I just had no idea.
    Your stitches are looking good. I love your weird animal shapes, my first lot of random aren't nearly as fun looking.

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