Saturday, March 31, 2012

2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge: March Motif

‘Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. –Alexander Pope

I'm not sure where March went. I printed out Ann's tutorial on the 1st and thinking about her variations on loops and swirls all month long. And now, here it is a few hours before the month's end. I did not practice any of the motifs because most of them I've done before. And I only scribbled a few sketches out before committing thread to the fabric of my sampler quilt.

I probably should have at least warmed up a little before I started on my sampler quilt to get in the right frame of mind. I did the flowers and loops first and don't love how they turned out. But I do absolutely love the stars and loops. This one I'd never tried before. This motif is deceptively simple looking. I'd made several attempts at doodling it out on paper, but would always get frustrated and give up because I could never remember which way to go when making the stars so I didn't box myself in. This time, I doodled more than I previously had, and drilled it into my brain every time I went to make a star that I needed to start the star in the opposite direction that I really wanted to do. I love how they came out.

I had a hard time deciding which design to pick for my sampler quilt, so I decided to do them all. I made a mistake when I bought my fabric and was short just a tiny bit. I had to piece two of the 8” blocks. It thought it would be fun to quilt a little bit of each design in to the divisions made by the extra seams.

And not to be bested by a feather, even an echo feather, I ripped out my one from last month and did it again. It's still not perfect, but I like it better.

I'm off to doodle the variations on loops and swirls in my notebook before it turns midnight, so I can officially say I finished March's challenge in March.

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4 comments:

Danih03 said...

Oh, crap! I forgot to do the heart loops on mine! Oh well! Yours ALL look great! I too, rushed at the last minute to get done! I'm guessing SewCalGal is on California time?? which helped:)

Carin@Ullhärvan said...

That freemotion quilting looks great!

Paulette said...

Your doodle quilting came out really nice. I think the stars are my favorite too. I tried them on paper and just never liked how they looked. Reading that you had to remind yourself to go at them backwards was helpful. I followed the lines of your stars with my mouse with that in mind and I get it now! What's neat about this challenge is that we can learn much from each other as well.

whimsyfox said...

really neat! the stars are my favorite too.