More practice at Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to Free Motion Mavericks (week 258). I'm doing double duty today, so here's the link to December's Throwback Thursday.

Practicing my free motion quilting (FMQ)

Free Motion Framework
by Jen Eskridge

After finishing up a big project (the Epic Neutral Bow Tie Quilt) and a DrEAMi! (the fabric basket) last week, it's now time to play. Of course, I couldn't resist the Black Friday sale at C&T Publishing last week and bought myself the digital copy of Free Motion Framework by Jen Eskridge.

This book is essentially about making whole cloth quilts to learn or advance your FMQ skills. I actually love making whole cloth quilts, but there is so much more potential to the book.

Since I'm not in the mood to embark on a project right now, I was going through the book and was intrigued to find on page 21, five ways of quilting feathers within a cat's eye shape.

Practicing feather shapes in a cat's eye shape

I just happened to have some fabric that sort of had this shape on it. I used a technique that I learned from Cindy Needham in her Craftsy course, Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts. It's called Large Print Wholecloth Quilt. Essentially it involves FMQ using the backing fabric as a template to create a wholecloth quilt in the front, on a solid fabric.

Here's what I mean.
This is the fabric that I quilted on, but the result is on the solid fabric.

This is the side that I quilted on,
but is the back of the piece

Practicing FMQ on the
patterned fabric

This is the back while quilting, but
the front of the piece when done.

In the two flowers above, I practiced the techniques that the author suggested for the feathers within the shape. Each shape has a different technique.

After that, I used the same technique on all of the shapes in the flower to see how it would look.

This is the shape with the feathers on the outside

The feathers are now on the inside of the shape.

These are feathers without a border around the shape.

What I learned

• By the end of this practice, my feathers were actually getting worse - it was past the time to stop.
• The point of the quilting was to see how the different feathers within the same shape would look. It was an interesting exercise.  
• I want to learn more feather techniques - and since I have a couple of books and classes on Bluprint (Craftsy), I will see what I can do. The fun part about learning new designs is that it's mostly a matter of doodling them, a lot!
• I'm very impressed with Jen Eskridge's book, Free Motion Framework. I really hope to use it more like she suggests. Having a framework for FMQ on a solid fabric would certainly be easier than trying to piece a quilt. 😊 If you're interested, I highly recommend that you watch her video about her book.

Related links

December's OMG - to
make another FMQ fabric basket

• Free Motion Framework by Jen Eskridge, C&T Publishing
• Cindy Needham, Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts course on Bluprint
• Post on the Large Print Wholecloth Quilt technique, November 1, 2017

Linking parties and OMG

For the December One Monthly Goal (OMG) I will be making another FMQ fabric basket as a Christmas gift. You can see my first FMQ fabric basket here.

I'll be linking this post up to several great linky parties. Why not see what's happening? Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday, Colour and Inspiration Tuesday, Midweek Makers, Off the Wall Friday, Finished or Not Finished Friday, Friday Foto Fun, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?,  Peacock Party, What I Made Monday, Design Wall Monday, 

Free Motion Mavericks Link Up

Thanks to everyone who linked up last time. I'm really sorry for being so late replying to comments but I am hoping to get caught up....one day :-) If you haven't seen it, go see Denise's quilt at For the love of geese. It really is a beautiful batik quilt!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter