November Free Motion Quilt Challenge with Sarah Vedeler

This month's Free Motion Quilt Challenge (from SewCalGal) concentrates on one quilting motif, spirals. Sarah Vedeler presents very good guidelines for adding spirals to any quilting projects.  The best way to practice spirals is in rows.  The tutorial includes sheets of spirals to print off and practice tracing with a pencil to start building muscle memory.

  Next is sectioning off a fat quarter practice quilt sandwich with my trusty Hera marker into two inch and one inch grids.

This is actually my 2nd practice sandwich, I have just kept this by my machine and tried to practiced a row of two inch and one inch spirals whenever I sit down to sew.  I am currently doing some machine applique work on the Ladies of the Sea (pattern by Sue Garmen) and every time I change thread colors, I just pop on the quilting foot and do a row of spirals for practice.

 I like to throw spirals at random into my background filler quiting or also in small corner stones and this tutorial has definitely improved my spirals.  I have found a little sing song going thru my head as I practice: "leave yourself an escape route"  "leave yourself an escape route".

I am all caught up with the Sally Post Floral Sampler (from Sentimental Stitches)  love how this quilt is coming together.

As well as the Sally Post  is coming, the red and green applique is just not turning out as I had hoped.  I bought three yards of this beautiful new Jo Morton fabric

 thinking I would like it as sashing.  My usual formula of sticking with the same fabric lines for success has let me down.

 I used mostly Jo Mortons for the applique blocks, but I am just not liking this fabric as a sashing for the quilt.  I was thinking a setting sort of like this one

 on the back of Elly Sienkiewicz book Beloved Baltimore Album Quilts.  The sashing in this quilt is a very "busy" fabric.  I think maybe my blocks are too simple for this fabric, so I tried just a solid red:

Hmmm, still not really there, maybe no white corner stones:

Closer, but still not what I thought it would be.  I have totally enjoyed working on these red and green blocks, and I have 21 of them completed, but for now they have been packed away in a tote and put on the bottom shelf...

So, this is what I have been up to lately.  Hope you are all having a great Thanksgiving weekend.  I have one parting shot, this is the fabric I found in my stash for the back of my spiral practice quilt sandwich

Ha Ha, in what life did I think I needed THAT fabric. I could do a whole post on ugly fabrics in my stash.

Happy Stitching All,
Cheri

Practice, Practice, Practice

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