Favourite Things Friday: Free-Motion Quilting

Always trust a quilter. She knows her way around the block.
–Unknown

When I did free-motion quilting for the first time at the end of July 2010 I absolutely hated every second of it. I did a fairly tight meander across the whole thing. It took me about 10 hours to do a 52" x 68" quilt. It was tedious. I missed dropping off my quilt top at the long-arm quilter and getting it back transformed into something amazing. I saw every single imperfection. I worried the whole time that I had ruined it. I didn't think I would ever want to quilt my own again.

After a trip through the washer, I was fairly content with my first attempt at FMQ. Necessity {i.e. lack of income} dictated that if I wanted to finish any more quilts, I'd just have to do it myself. So I tried again with loopy flowers on the next quilt. It was an interesting adventure that turned out pretty well. I went back to meandering and straight-line on a couple more quilts and then did some more loopy flowers. I decided to give feathers a try and they didn't come out too badly. I branched out from there, adding in a bit of something new to each quilt, along with the old stand-by favorites. My skills improved, my stitches got more consistent and my quilting got more elaborate.

At the end of June 2011, I finished a second snowball quilt, identical to the one I'd started with. This one took about 35 hours to quilt, there wasn't one straight line or meander anywhere on it and I didn't find it tedious to spend all that time at the machine. As a matter of fact, I loved it. I loved free-motion quilting.

I know I'm tooting my own horn here. I'm not exactly sure how to go about this in a humble sort of way. I'm far from perfect at it and I can improve in so many ways. But I really like the rhythm of machine quilting. And there is something very satisfactory in making a quilt start to finish and having part of that process be producing something that is a reasonable facsimile of free-motion machine quilting.

In the interest of improving this skill, I've decided to do two things. The first is to {start and} finish the Free-Motion Quilt Along by Christina at A Few Scraps. I have my quilt top cut and ready to put together, the back cut and the batting waiting. I'm hoping to squeeze it in after I finish my Christmas crafting but before the New Year.

The second thing I've decided to do is to join Sew Cal Gal's Free-Motion Quilting Challenge.

There will be a new challenge each month from some really great FMQ experts. I've come a long way on my own, but I'm really looking forward to using these challenges to improve the way I quilt. There will be lots of mutual encouragement to keep me motivated and of course, prizes don't hurt either. Free-motion quilting is something that I really love to do and I'm hoping that I will love it even more as I improve.

Today's post brought to you by:

I Must Ask . . . What Is Your Favorite Holiday?

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up—they have no holidays. –Henny Youngman

Thanks to everyone who voted for what you are thankful for. Children and Family each took 15 votes and Friends took 16, which just goes to show that you can pick your friends but not your family. I also found it interesting that the Spouse category got only one more vote than the Parents category . Seriously, though. It was nice to stop for a minute and count all the good things and people in my life.

Christmas is in 24 days. Twenty. Four. Days. People. If that doesn't scare the pants off you, then someone else must do the planning/decorating/shopping/baking/wrapping/card sending at your house. Christmas comes with its stress. Finding the perfect gift. Making the money stretch for the perfect gift. Finding the time to do all the pre-holiday preparations. Making it through the family parties with your sanity still in tact. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. It is one of my favorite holidays. I love giving a thoughtful, personal gift to someone I care about. I enjoy the parties, the food, the company, the feeling in the air. There is something magical about it. Perhaps it is all the twinkle lights.

Christmas is in my top three favorite holidays. I'm not sure how they rank in order of preference, but the three I love the most are Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each one has its merits. On Halloween, you can be anyone you want to be. Thanksgiving is filled with friends and family and good food. And Christmas is about remembering the One who gave all for us. I'm not sure that I love the other holidays any less, though. I love potato salad and fireworks on the Fourth of July, staying up until midnight to ring in a new year, pinching anyone who didn't wear green on the 17^th of March, and making paper hearts for my favorite people in February. It is fun to celebrate the little things in life, as well as the big. So today, I must ask . . . what is your favorite holiday?

Kimono Garden

People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. –Edith Wharton

Free-motion quilting is kind of a scary thing. It is just you and wherever your imagination can take the thread. As I've worked on improving this skill, the biggest obstacle is figuring out how to quilt something. Edge-to-edge works for some things. But I really prefer custom quilting that enhances the quilt's design.

I'm still working on branching out with quilting designs. I gave this quilt the Swirly Treatment; the same favorite swirls I've put into at least four other quilts.

And I quilted the squares and border the same way I did the Sudoku quilt. As a matter of fact, I designed this table runner specifically so that I could quilt it the same way.

This year, on both sides of our family we're doing “Dirty Santa” gift exchanges, where everyone brings a gift, we draw numbers and the person with the lowest number picks a gift to open. The next person can either steal that gift or open something else. It's called “Dirty Santa” because playing dirty is allowed. Doing a gift exchange this way takes a lot of pressure off. You don't have to worry about finding “the perfect gift” for a specific person. The party goers get to choose what their perfect gift is. And since I don't know who this will end up with, I can blog about it beforehand without spoiling the surprise.

Today's post brought to you by:

Finished: Sudoku Quilt

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny. –Tryon Edwards

This quilt was so fun to make! A shout out to P. for the inspiration and to Sarah for sharing the pattern! I'm pretty sure there will be another one in my future.

To quilt this, I marked diagonally through each square and then quilted a series of arcs around the X's I'd marked. It was a lot of fun.

Mathematically, this quilt is awesome. The outer border is 8", exactly double the nine-patch squares, and it divides evenly by 8 as well, so I marked it in 8" squares, drew X's through them and quilted the same arcs as I did in the nine-patches. And with all that stripey goodness, I couldn't resist a bit of stripey bias binding.

I quilted my favorite swirls into the sashing. They are hard to see from the front because the thread is the same color as the sashing, so here's a view from the back.

Here's a shot of the whole quilt. So much fun and so quick to put together!

Read more about this quilt:
Beginnings
Fabric Selection
Sudoku Quilt Group
Finished Quilt Top

Today's post brought to you by:

Various and Sundry Monday: Vol 19

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. –Robert Brault

The Proof is in the Pudding
OK, not so much the pudding as the stuffing. And technically, it was dressing, since I didn't actually stuff it into the bird.

Mr. Bug's mom always makes home made stuffing and it is SO good. However, we spent Thanksgiving with my family, so for my contribution to the meal, I offered to make stuffing from scratch. I asked Mr. Bug's mom how she makes hers. She is one of those cooks who doesn't follow a recipe. She just throws stuff in a pot and it tastes good. Not me. I like to color inside the lines. And I like to have a definitive recipe to follow when I cook. Never-the-less, I decided to give it a try because if I succeeded my efforts would pay off and if not, we had some Stove Top to use as the back-up plan. I assembled my ingredients and started putting the recipe together.

Butter melted, check. Chopped onions and celery cooked until tender, check. Salt, pepper and sage, check. Two bags of dry bread, che . . . hey wait. There's not enough room in the pot. What do I do now? Stirring carefully isn't working. I'm just making a mess. Is there a bigger pot somewhere? Yes, that's what I need. A bigger pot. I'll move the stuffing to the bigger pot . . . uh, oh. Crap. I don't know how to cook on an electric stove and the stuffing at the bottom of the pan is burned. Dang. I hope I can get it all out. I'd better turn down the heat while it try to dig the burnt bits out.

It wasn't a complete disaster even though I burned the stuffing at the bottom of the pan a second time, while I was trying to dig out the bits from the first time. And I cheated and added two packages of Stove Top to the mix, just to get a better flavor. I wasn't sure that the sage was enough by itself. Everyone seemed to like it and there was plenty to go around despite the fact that I burned about a third of the recipe.

Still, next time I volunteer to bring the stuffing, I'm going to Google an actual recipe.

Another Toad Has Gone Missing
A while back, I mentioned that we keep fire-bellied toads in an aquarium. We started out with Henry who was the class pet in LadyBug's 1^st grade class and then we bought Henry a friend, who we named Violet. It turned out that Henry was really Violet and Violet was really Henry and then Henry mysteriously went missing. We supposed that he buried himself in the rocks and that was the end of him. I never found any remains, but I didn't go looking for them either. I disturbed the rocks as little as possible when I changed the water and cleaned the aquarium. When I finally did get brave enough to shift things around {like four months later} there was no sign of Henry anywhere. But we can't figure out how he might have escaped, either.

That's not to say it isn't possible because the other day Pants, the replacement we bought for Henry so Violet wouldn't be lonely, shimmied up the corner of the aquarium and had his nose poked out a teeny, tiny little notch in the hood meant for the cord of the filter. There are actually two such notches on the cover, but since we only have one filter, we only use one of them. I thought we'd taped over the other to prevent any more toads from going missing, but I guess we didn't, because Violet isn't anywhere to be found and I don't really have the heart to sift through the rocks in search of her.

I guess the question now is, do we get Pants a friend?

Poultry in Motion
I'm making table runners to give as Christmas gifts this year. I don't know who most of them will go to yet because we're going to play gift exchange games at most of the parties I'm taking them to. I have Kimono Garden all quilted and the binding just needs the hand stitching on it. I'll show it soon.

I've got two other runners put together, sandwiched and basted ready for quilting. I'm calling them Poultry in Motion. I can get away with calling them both the same thing because they'll be going to two different parties.

Before you think I'm all clever with the name for these, it is the name of the fabric line, but I thought it was pretty hilarious, so I kept it.

I love how these turned out. As I was putting them together, I pondered ways to quilt them. I'm excited to try a few new free-motion things. But at the same time, I still have that nervous what-if-I-mess-up feeling as I take the first stitch.

I am pretty encouraged at how quickly the tops have gone together so far. The quilting on Kimono Garden was pretty fussy, but even that went pretty fast, so I'm really hoping that I'll be ahead of the game instead of hand-stitching the binding down in the car on the way to the party.

Monday Music Spot: The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Michelle at The Gypsy Quilter shared some really great music recently and I have to pay it forward. Classical cellist, Yo-Yo Ma has teamed up with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan to create The Goat Rodeo Sessions. It is a little bit bluegrass, a little bit classical and a whole lot of awesome. In this clip the four musicians talk a little bit about the album and there are snippets of a few songs.


I'm hoping that Santa puts an iTunes gift card in my stocking, because this has jumped to the top of my wish list. Here's another sampling {note: swear alert. Stop at time index 4:15 to avoid}. And for more, check out The Goat Rodeo Sessions Playlist on YouTube.