Almost Caught Up

I have been madly practicing my free motion skills this week and I am happy to report that I am almost caught up with Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project.

I tend to work in fits and spurts.  Sometimes my life just gets too hectic to make time every day or even each week to practice like I should.  Things have become a bit quieter over the past couple of weeks so I have used the time to my advantage to catch up.

Today I worked on Weeks 34-41 which was mostly Edge to Edge designs. I re-watched each of the video's produced by Leah Day and got down to it.

First we did Flowing Lines:

Then came Goldilocks which is basically Flowing lines with some stippling in the gaps.

Next was Trapped Paisley which is again Flowing Lines this time with Paisley in the gaps.

Everything was going relatively smoothly until I got to Jagged Lines.  The principle was the same as for Flowing Lines but instead of flowing lines we used straight lines (jagged).  For some reason I really struggle with straight lines. I couldn't keep them consistent and I wasn't sure how to do the gaps but with a bit of perseverance this is what I came up with.

Not my best effort but hey, it's all practice.  Finally, the last edge to edge design was called Lost Data.  This is Jagged Lines with Zippling in the gaps.  My zippling leaves a bit to be desired so this is definitely on my keep practicing list.  I love the concept, I just need to get better at it.

And just for fun l continued the Jagged Lines theme and added some cross-hatching.  This was not one of Leah's designs and l know why - it required a LOT of travel stitching.  It is effective but it took a long time and would make a quilt very stiff.  I was trying to be creative but perhaps I need to keep trying!

After all those edge to edge designs it was time to try Matrix.  Leah used this design as a quilt busting design on a large scale but I didn't have anything large enough that was ready to quilt so I did it on a smaller scale on a practice sandwich.  I must confess I did this without first watching the video which was probably a mistake.  I think my initial lines are probably a bit too curvy which has effected the overall design but I can at least tick this off the completed list.

I skipped Week 40 quilt busting design Flower Power for the same reason as above - I didn't have anything  large enough prepared but I will come back to it.  I finished off my 6 hour quilting session today with Pod Quilting.  Again I did this on a much smaller scale than Leah intended.  I based my sample on Leah's 'Pebble Ripples' design which is one of my favorites   I must admit that I did rush this a bit because after 6 hours of quilting my shoulders were really aching and I really wanted to be finished for the day so it is far from my best but it was so much fun to do and a good way to finish up.

So that's it.  I am almost caught up with the Free Motion Quilting Project.  I have about 8 flimsy's waiting to be sandwiched so my next task is to get some of those done so I can start to quilt on some 'real' quilts rather than practice sandwiches.

Happy quilting everyone.

Sue