Wednesday, July 08, 2020

Finished pinwheels and Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to Free Motion Mavericks, Week 288. This week I tried out different free motion quilting (FMQ) designs on the rest of the pinwheel blocks in the Pinwheels and Stars Baby Quilt.

FMQ the last three pinwheel blocks

Here are the final three pinwheel blocks. I didn't realise until I added the images here that all three blocks have FMQ in both the background and patterned fabrics.

Adding feathers 

Close-up of the FMQ feathers


FMQ echoed leaves

FMQ three lines within each triangle

You may remember that I drew 10 different possible FMQ designs for these pinwheel blocks. Before deciding on the last FMQ design to use, I reviewed the designs that I had used so far. Not surprisingly, most of them where more curvy than angular. To even it up a bit, I made this last one using lines. You can see that I marked one block in red. After that I just drew a dot at roughly each ¼" on the edge to aim for.
Pinwheel FMQ designs used
For the sixth design, I used a curvy variation - echoed leaves instead of echoed diamonds. Finally, for the seventh design, I added the lines to both the background and printed fabrics.

What I learned
  • I've really enjoyed working from a list of already prepared possible designs. I'm usually not that organised but it was worth the effort of finding FMQ designs on the internet and books, and then sketching them out. 
  • There are so many FMQ possibilities. Do you have a favourite? Click on the image to see the details.

Related links
Linking parties
Here are some of the fun parties that I will be linking up to. As well, make sure to link up below at Free Motion Mavericks - your post doesn't have to be FMQ related. Colour & Inspiration Tuesday, Midweek Makers, Put Your Foot Down, Needle & Thread Thursday, Finished or Not Finished Friday, Friday Foto Fun, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Peacock PartyOh Scrap!Monday Making, TGIFF (since Gail said that not finished was fine!)

Free Motion Mavericks

We had a respectable turn out for our last party here - thanks for linking up! If you didn't see them, we had two link-ups by participants of the Stitching Sunshine Blog Hop. 
Denise of For the Love of Geese, made her sun and two flowers using Dresden plates. Her sun is absolutely stunning! Here's a link to her post if you didn't visit it yet. 

Using Dresden plates - Denise of For the Love of Geese

For something totally different, read about Totally Irrational, the striking quilt made by Vasudha of Storied Quilts.

Totally Irrational - Vasudha of Storied Quilts
Now it's your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

16 comments:

  1. I love seeing how different the same pinwheel block looks, depending on how you quilted it, and those feathers look so good. In addition to trolling the Internet in search of quilting motifs (Pinterest in particular!), I also got a couple of Angela Walters' books recently that I'm going to be referring to a lot. What I love about them is that, instead of being project based like so many other quilting books, these are designed to be used as references and they are organized in chapters like "Designs for Squares, "Designs for Triangles," "Designs for Circles," "Background Fill Designs," etc.

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    1. Hi Rebecca, I totally agree about how wonderful Angela Walter's books are. I have most of them and now that I have my studio, I brought the old laptop there so that I can look at my ebooks more easily. I love a real book but they are so expensive. Besides an ebook is total instant gratification. Thanks so much for linking up. Take care.

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  2. How fun! They all look great, I am partial to the feathers tho ;-)

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  3. Congrats on finishing the quilting in the final three Pinwheels! You did such a lovely job.

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    1. Thanks so much...I guess the star blocks are next....time to figure out what to do there too. Take care.

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  4. I totally get what you mean about enjoying trying out the various FMQ designs in your pinwheel quilt! I've done that very thing on several quilts over the years. Great fun, great practice for us, and a great texture in the end. :-)

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    1. Hi Sandra, you sure do get it - your latest triangle quilt is amazing! Thanks so much for linking up!

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  5. Congrats on your finish. I looked at them all and narrowed a favourite down to about three, then realising that was still nearly half I decided to just like them all. What a great way to have tested out a stack of designs on something you weren't too attached to. Thanks for sharing at the Chameleon's Colour & Inspiration Party!

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    1. Thanks Dione. It was a good practice exercise and a lot of fun seeing what I could come up with. Now comes the star blocks. Thanks again for hosting a great party....and enjoy your holiday.

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  6. Thank you for sharing my quilt. I'm so excited to hear you are down to 3 blocks. It was a beautiful quilt top and I think what you have done in each will add so much interest to the quilt. Hope to see finish soon. Thank you for linking up to Put your foot down.

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    1. Thanks Denise. Now it's time to FMQ the stars. They are much bigger but I think that I'll take the time to plan these out also. Then will come the centre....Yikes!

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  7. Thanks for showing us that sketch out of your free motion before beginning. The feathers do look gorgeous, but the others work well - great to see the variety. Lovely.

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    1. Thanks Lynn, it was fun following a bit of a plan rather than just doing what I felt like at the time because let's face it, sometime, the ideas don't come and then I end up doing the same old thing. Thanks for dropping by. Take care.

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