July Free Motion Quilting Challenge

Wow, the month is ending already!  Been a little busy, but still made time SewCalGal's fabulous Free-Motion Quilting Challenge.

Angela Walters, a wonderful "modern quilter" presented the challenge this month - a way of filling a large space by creating "tiles" as you stitch (another kind of "divide and conquer" technique).  In her tutorial, the tiles are all filled with the same pattern (top center on mine), and though it looks great that way, and I will probably do another sample with a single fill pattern, I chose to use this as an opportunity to revisit many of the patterns that we've learned in the first half year.   It was a fun technique, and an interesting way to fill up space (still working on the whole free motion straight line thing).

I'm pleased to see that my pebbles are improving, but the loopy patterns (flowers and stars) were not as fluid as they were back in March.  Guess it's a good idea to do a warm-up before you use any pattern on an actual quilt!

The thread for this project is Sulky 40 wt. 100% Rayon in #2245 oldgold/black/red, and though I wish I had not matched one of the fabric colors (on both sides!) I loved sewing with this thread - it was easy-peasy and had no tension problems at all (well, a few dots from the other side when I hit those curves too fast, but that's to be expected) and it looks great (bright colors and a little shiny too).  

Used a 90/14 topstitch needle for this.  And Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting, and 100% cotton quilting weight fabric.

And here's the back:

(wow, it it ever hard to photograph red!  It's not really this bright in real life, though it is a red-red.)

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!

Free Motion Quilting Challenge for May

Here we are again with another fun free motion quilting challenge from SewCalGal - and this month our teacher is Leah Day of 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs fame!  She is so generous with her knowledge and experience and time, and is currently my favorite blog personality (well, she's tied with the YarnHarlot for my favorite blogger, but Stephanie (YarnHarlot) is all about knitting, and we're talking FMQ here)!  

So here it is, this month's lesson - Double Stippling and Railroad Tracks:

She calls these a "Foundational Design" because you start out with one large scale line (the foundation) that is used to anchor another smaller scale line of quilting pattern. 

Here's the back of this sample so you can see what I mean - the darker pink line is the foundation (and yes, the tension is not great on this line - I was using up old random bobbins again and the thread didn't match my top thread).

The slightly variegated orangey thread is the double stippled railroad tracks (with better tension - it matches my top thread)

The challenge here is to anchor the smaller pattern onto the foundation, but still evenly and fluently fill up the empty space without either overcrowding or leaving big blank spaces.
The layout of your foundation is critical to success on this!

Railroad Tracks was a challenge since my foundation line didn't bring me into the left corner very well, and I was concentrating so much on keeping the shapes angular and not over-filling the centers, that I didn't spread out into the open areas enough!  Needs practice, but lots of fun.

Got a bit more even coverage with the regular double stippling, though my foundation line gave me some challenges there too (lower right corner).

The other challenge for me is making a straight line (see the pathetic outline/frame stitches).  Who knew that would be so hard!  Lines want some practice, or some guide marks perhaps.

One really helpful thing I learned from watching Leah's videos, is to take your time - stop and look where you need to go next!  I have a tendency to try to figure it all out on the fly, and end up not making the lines flow and fill as well as they could.  I need to keep working on that relaxed stop-and-go attitude (hurry-er is not better - it's not even faster!).

This is a fun technique to use, and not hard (just needs a bit more practice) and will definitely get used somewhere on my quilts (and aren't those railroad tracks so cute!).

Basic info - 

This month's thread is Superior Threads King Tut cotton 40/3 cottage colors 911 "Flower Pot" with a 90/14 topstitch needle (and once I switched to this in the bobbin too, I had no tension issues - though someday I need to try out one of those "bottom line" threads that are designed to go with King Tut).

Batting is Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly.
Oh yes, and I took Leah's advice to use grippy gloves, but since I don't have any "Machingers", I just used a new pair of gardening gloves (with the little sticky bumps on the fingertips).  They worked great and really helped me control the fabric.