Friday, January 09, 2026

Project Quilting 17.1 Challenge - A Clean Slate

Hi and welcome to the first challenge of Project Quilting for the year. The theme is a clean slate and should probably include some white.

Here is my thinking process - a clean slate reminded me of a blank page - nothing on it yet, full of possibilities. However for many artists, a blank page is not always a good thing. It can lead to tension and indecision - what to do? how to do it? where to start?

Filling the blank page

I was going through my email (to get rid of some of those 100s of unread email) and went down a rabbit hole of free motion quilting (FMQ). What's a blank stitching area? How to fill it? What to make?

Filling the blank page starts with some tentative white on white FMQ. This slowly opens up to a light pink - nothing too bold, just making marks. Eventually it leads to more colour. In this case, a light variegated thread that flourishes into bold feathers.

I was inspired by the book Free-Motion Framework by Jen Eskridge. I drew circles and triangles on white fabric with a FriXion pen. I then started filling the blank page. To be honest, I was going to do much more of the white-on-white but I couldn't see what I was stitching - so it became pink more quickly than I had planned 😉

Filling the blank page with thread

From a blank page

Thanks to both Kim and Trish for this interesting start to season 17. Looking forward to more challenges.

What I learned

It took me a while to go from a clean slate to a blank page. After that, it was a question of what to do on that blank page. As I mentioned an email from Jen Eskridge took me to her book and that was that!
I'm very happy to say that I used cotton thread and that my tension was fine. However, that was probably because I went slowly and my FMQ was small. It's when I expand to larger designs that I get tension problems.
It was a fun FMQ exercise and I've prepared a couple for blank pages to practice on. However no white-on-white is allowed!
Practicing every few months when a quilt is ready to FMQ isn't really enough if you want to get better. I'd like to work on that this year, at least a little bit.