This month's free motion quilting challenge is presented by Diane Gaudynski. I admire her quilting so much, and her style of machine quilting is always my goal when I quilt. Her lesson this month is Echo Feather Plume. The things I learned were that I am definately a "racer" back to the spine and tend to make a straight line and need to train my brain to "think curve or heart shape" and curve that feather back into the spine. The other great tip was to quilt in colored thread (I tend to like clear mono filament in my quilting) because you can actually see your stitches and see if you are making even stitch lengths. 
I did a couple of practice pieces and then even did a little sample applique quilt and did some feathers and echoes and whatever else came to mind to fill in the background. 
Diane's tutorial is packed with good tips as is her blog. I have owned her book Quilt Savvy for a while. 
I have lots of areas in the book highlighted for quick reference and I go back to this book frequently just to brush up and remember all the great techniques. 
The one thing I learned most from the book is what a difference the open toe foot makes. Both of these feet are good, but the open toe makes a HUGE difference in being able to see where you are going. I think my echo quilting improved 100% when I bought this foot.
The quilting continues on Bella Garden (by McKenna Ryan), I have finished the center.
I did not put in any feathers but I did quilt in a couple swirls, a butterfly and a lot of echo quilting.
Happy Stitching all from snowy Nebraska.
Cheri
Nice work! Practice really does help so much!! Your Bella Garden is beautiful!!
ReplyDeleteGreat job! I still have to do mine for this month.
ReplyDeleteReally nice - thank you for sharing the information about the open toe foot. I have a closed toe clear foot, but it's still really challenging to see well.
ReplyDelete