Spring is in the air with Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to Free Motion Mavericks (Week 220) link-up.

Spring is in the air!

There is hope! There is a viral rumour that Spring may show up again this year. We are all very hopeful. It's funny to see my friends refusing to bundle up to cross the street to get coffee. Unless it's a blizzard out there, we are acting as if Spring was here 😊

This week I decided to invite spring onto my fabric with some free motion quilted (FMQ) flowers.

I know how to do the FMQ all-over flowers but I wanted to practice some real flowers. I'm planning a pretty baby quilt with a FMQ garden in the centre.

The full image isn't great, so I cut it up into two halves.

FMQ spring flowers - 1

FMQ spring flowers - 2

I researched the web for FMQ tulips. What I found was more of a snow drop (see related links below). I practiced it and from there came up with a pretty good looking tulip. I was pretty familiar with the tulip's leaf since I had just trimmed the dozen I bought this weekend.

Snow drops in spring

Tulips dancing and pansies accompanying them

As I was adding flowers, I took advantage of the empty space at the bottom of the flower bed to FMQ shorter flowers that could be violets or pansies. At this point, I became less specific about the type of flowers that I was drawing, as long as they looked flower-like. 😊

Here are some flowers that I drew based on The Bloom going on in the desert right now! I've included some links below. My plan was to quilt them using different colours, but I got carried away with the grey thread that was on the machine.

Desert blooms

This time the leaves and flowers at the bottom are just experiments. I'll have to look into drawing smaller flowers too!

Finally, at the bottom of the piece, I tried FMQ some lotus flowers and leaves. It would be nice to add a pond in that baby quilt garden!

Lotus flower and leaves in the water

What I learned

• I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to draw these flowers too much before I got the hang of it. If only I had practiced those lotus flowers!
• The grey thread looked great on the blue background while I was stitching, but next time I will try something with more contrast so that is photographs better (mistakes and all).
• It's on my bucket list to see the desert bloom....one day :-)

Related links

• Susies scraps: treadling tulips (looks like a snow drop)
• FMQ all-over flowers such as the Feather Meander
• Links to Desert Bloom or Super Bloom this week.

Linking parties
I'll be linking up to several great linkies this week. Why not check out what others have made. Tuesday Colour Linky Party, Silly Mama Quilts WIPs, Midweek Makers,  Needle & Thread Thursday, Finished or Not Friday, Friday Foto Fun, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, Moving It Forward, What I Made Monday,

Thank you to everyone who linked up two weeks ago. A special thank you to Quilting Gail, for linking up her two finished UFOs. Congrats!. If you didn't see it, you really should check it out!

2 UFOs finished by Quilting Gail

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter