Thursday, January 13, 2022

Back to Version 2.0 on Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 364 of Free Motion Mavericks! The new year has begun and the biggest goal that I have to accomplish this year is Version 2.0 of my son's quilt. No more excuses....there will hopefully be progress posted at least once per fortnight when it's my turn to host!

FMQ Canada's beauty starting with the west coast

Stitching Canada's natural beauty

If you remember, my mother hand-quilted the original quilt with themes based on what my son liked. The large tan angled strip at the top was originally quilted with tree motifs for his life in Northern Ontario. I've decided to quilt it based on the nature found within Canada's provinces, going from west to east. 

I've divided the tan strip in roughly 5 sections based on Canada's geographic areas (West Coast, Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces) I will try to add the North somewhere in there too!

I started with the ocean. Many years ago we went to Vancouver and Victoria and saw some whales. Can you spot a whale in there? 

Coastal waters and a whale

After that comes the mountains of course! There are rocks and pebbles to separate the water from the land, then, mountains, trees, a river, plants and a bear! 

I'm not sure what to quilt at the bottom since I don't want this to be too densely quilted (I know...too late!) I think maybe just another tuff of plants like the first one.

The West Coast with mountains, forests, a river and a bear.

Here is the map of the quilt and its original quilted designs. I'm now doing the tan stripe that says "trees". The stripe is about 65" long by 6" wide.

What I learned

  • I've enjoyed researching ideas for quilting this section. There are so many fun, iconic images for each region.
  • I may somehow insert the North within the prairies since a good chunk of the North is over the prairies.
  • I even googled how to capitalise the geographic areas. Hopefully I got it right! (Should I capitalise Google when it's a verb? 😊 I decided not to!)
  • I better make some of the other quilting simpler, otherwise it will take me years to quilt this!
  • I looked at my related links and the original PowerPoint that I created and realised that I already have a whole bunch of ideas for the quilting...so I'm going back to that planning to see how it can help me!
  • I love my cotton thread but it did not want to FMQ on this quilt. The tension was not good, even after trying a couple of kinds of different brands. So I'm using some Omni thread that I bought as part of a trial pack from Superior Threads (when the exchange was good here...sigh). It's working very well. However, tan is the only colour I have, so I'm going to pick up some Glide thread since it comes so highly recommended by many of you (thanks!). I'm going to take Friday morning off for a little road trip to pick up thread....life really has gotten dull, hasn't it? Oh well, I will enjoy my drive (cold and sunny forecast!) and probably stop in at a drive-through Tim Horton for breakfast. When life gets basic, you have to appreciate the little things!😎
Related links

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Let's see what's going on in Internet Quilt land! Put your foot down, Finished or Not Finished Friday, Peacock Party, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2022, Design Wall Monday, Monday Making


Free Motion Mavericks

It was a very quiet week last time but I did want to thank Gail of Quilting Gail for linking up the announcement for her PHD in 2022. If you participate, you may end up linking up lots of past UFOs as you FMQ them! It's not too late to participate...you have a couple of days left!

Get those UFOs done! with Quilting Gail

It's now your turn.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

14 comments:

  1. So funny, and boy I can relate, that you found some of your originally planned ideas for quilting this! I just LOVE the whale and the bear, so cool and well done!

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    1. Thanks so much Sandra - I'm now looking through that PowerPoint and making a list that will be easily accessible for me...so that I don't forget. I also realised that it was supposed to include fishing and camping, so I'll probably make Ontario the biggest part and include those there. It's great to include family memories too. Have a great week Sandra.

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  2. Love the whale tale!!! And the mountains, forests and bear!!!

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    1. Thanks Nancy, I'm looking forward to more stitching now that I found my original ideas for the strip :-) Have a great week.

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  3. You will certainly come up with quilting that will compliment your mothers original design. The struggle to come up with designs certainly is real. Cant wait to see the finish. Thank you for the linky party, finally something I can share.

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    1. Hi Denise, thanks for linking up. Yes, ideas are now coming since I found my original notes. My son saw the quilting so far and was pretty impressed although I could tell that he though that I might want to quilt a little less densely if I want to get it done this year :-) Have a great week.

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  4. Ton quilting est super ! J'aime beaucoup la queue de baleine, et l'ours au pied des montagnes !
    Merci pour le lien ;)

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    1. Bonjour et merci Frédérique. J'ai trouvé des animaux faciles à quilter donc ça va faire un changements aux forets, montagnes et prairies! Bonne semaine.

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  5. I love it - no more excuses! I think it is so cool that you are replicating this quilt!

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    1. Thanks so much Alycia. Unfortunately I will always have some excuses but at least I'll have to quilt enough to make each Free Motion Mavericks' post interesting :-) Take care.

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  6. Looks like you've made good progress and have lots of ideas to pull from as you move on to the rest of the quilt.

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    1. Thanks Kate, I'm really glad that I found these. I really need to get organised and only deciding what to quilt...and just to get it done :-)

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  7. I so love your blog as I learn with you. This post taught me to try new sewing techniques and not be afraid to share them. Sometimes "perfect" gets in the way of my learning. Thank you so much for sharing!

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    1. You are so welcome! It can be humbling to see something as a failure and even worse to share it, but I have found that my mistakes usually resonate with readers and the most important thing is taking the time to reflect on it. Since my memory is as good as my accuracy (lol), I need to write about it, or I would be doomed to repeat it over and over again :-) Take care and thanks so much for commenting.

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