Thursday, October 01, 2020

300 Posts Party at Free Motion Mavericks

Happy 300th to Free Motion Mavericks! 


What a special anniversary to be celebrating. Muv from Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing started Free 
300th Linking up Party
Motion Mavericks on Thursday, 5 June 2014, to fill the void after Leah Day stopped hosting her Free Motion Friday. I had a wonderful trip down memory lane going through all of the posts to get to the first, original Free Motion Mavericks post. 

I discovered the Free Motion Mavericks linking party in March of 2015, at Muv's 36th post. I was free motion quilting (FMQ) a wholecloth quilt based on one of Cindy Needham's courses on Craftsy (which I highly recommend - all links are in Related links below). I was thrilled that there was a place to link up and to see other quilter's FMQ. 

My first FMQ link-up to Free Motion Mavericks!


Original button





I've been linking up all of my FMQ with Muv since then, and when it got quiet and Muv opened it up to other projects, I was linking up even more. I know that it's difficult to host a specialty linking party because it's easy for bloggers to forget to link up their posts. 😊 

I started co-hosting Free Motion Mavericks in January 2019, at week 212. I was really excited to co-host since I had hosted a couple of specialty linking parties (Celebrate - Fêtons 150 and Learning Quilt-A-Long (QAL)) but I just didn't have the time or energy to host a linking party every week. In December 2018, Muv asked me to co-host - I was thrilled and the rest is history!



I had a great time making these new buttons. You can see Muv's free motion quilted rudbeckia in the background. I learned to FMQ rudbeckia through her videos. 


In this special party post, we are asking you to link up to 3 of your favourite FMQ projects. I can't wait to see them all. I'm going to show you a couple of mine and then it will be your turn!

Lone Tree 2 art quilt
This small art quilt was FMQ within an inch of its life - but I love it. It's still one of my favourites.

Batik lap quilt - Chevy is always up for a picture!
Of all of the FMQ that I've done, why did I pick this one? Well it's because of the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower that I quilted into the quilt. 😊 

Notre-Dame Cathedral FMQ

Eiffel Tower FMQ

What I learned
  • Hosting a linking party is a lot of work. I'm so grateful that I am co-hosting with Muv. She's a great partner, a good friend and a great free motion quilter. 
  • I've learned to organise my posts around Free Motion Mavericks. I haven't always been successful, especially this spring when I was doing very little FMQ. Fall is here and I have started doing more FMQ. 
  • I love learning and having ongoing projects to write posts about every two weeks has helped keep me on track. Last year FMQ Garden & Pond kept me going roughly from March to September. This year I've been working on the Pinwheels and Stars Baby Quilt since May. 
  • I've also learned that the best way to promote the Free Motion Mavericks linking party is to link up to as many quilting linking parties as possible to get the word out, as well as asking quilters who FMQ to link up to Free Motion Mavericks. This is not easy for me to do since I don't like bothering people - but quilters are very generous and have been great in supporting this linking party.
  • To all quilters who have linked up or followed the Free Motion Mavericks in the last 6 years and to Muv, the founder of Free Motion Mavericks - THANK YOU!!!! 
Related links
Linking parties
Here are some great linking parties that I will be linking up to this week, This includes Free Motion Mavericks with Muv. I hope that you check them out, once you have linked up to this one, of course 😊 Monday MakingColour & Inspiration TuesdayMidweek Makers, Long Arm Learning, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall FridayFriday Foto FunCan I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Peacock Party

Free Motion Mavericks 


Wow! 300 parties since 2014! That is definitely something to celebrate. We had a record number of link ups since I've started co-hosting. Thank you so much!

I thought that you might want to see this lovely baby quilt by CHRISKNITSSEWS

A lovely baby quilt from CHRISKNITSSEWS

Now for the trans-Atlantic linking party! This week, both Muv and I are hosting a linking party. 

Here at Quilting & Learning - What a Combo, you can link up to three (3) Free Motion Quilting posts you want, either recent or past.

Muv of Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing will dig out some of her favourite posts from her archives (she's an amazing cook and a fabulous knitter!). You can link up to three posts on absolutely any subject, quilting related or not! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

10 comments:

  1. Happy Anniversary or birthday. I had forgotten reading that we could link 3 projects today and I came fully prepared to link my current free motion thread painting. But was happy to look back and find 2 other projects where I had done some fm thread painting and quilting. Thank you so much. Your tree is awesome but my favorite is still the pond life which is the one that brought me here to begin with.

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    1. Thanks so much Denise. I gave my Pond quilt to a friend to put up in her cubicle. She then had a visitor who was desperate to know who had made it...it turns out it was my cousin! Her mother was an amazing quilter, weaver, etc. So the pond has brought us back together (before Covid) :-)

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  2. Congratulations on 300 FMM posts! May you have many more :)

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  3. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! I'm so glad you said we could link up older posts today, because I've been frantically piecing a baby quilt all week for a little guy who had the nerve to be born TODAY, and have no new quilting to link up. It was fun searching back through my older posts; found some projects I'd forgotten all about. :-). And thanks for linking up with Long Arm Learning!

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    1. Thanks Rebecca. I think that keeping a blog is so awesome that way. We get to go back because everything is documented so much more than I would normally document (scraps of paper everywhere is my method of choice :-)) Good luck on your baby quilt! You can link it up next week...if you're done. Take care.

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  4. Joyeux anniversaire !! Longue vie à cette belle link party ;-)

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    1. Bonjour Frédérique, merci beaucoup pour tes voeux. A bientôt ma chère, Andrée

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  5. Congratulations to both of you on the milestone, and may there be many more parties to come. :)

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    1. Hi Dione, I meant to leave you comments on your posts but they were closed - so thank you so much for linking up three great FMQ projects. Is your Dream Big quilt still holding up after all of the other ribbons? Thanks for the tutorial for FMQ with baking paper. That could come in handy! Thanks again and take care!

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