Showing posts with label large print wholecloth quilt. Show all posts

Thursday, October 01, 2020

300 Posts Party at Free Motion Mavericks

Happy 300^th to Free Motion Mavericks!

What a special anniversary to be celebrating. Muv from Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing started Free

300^th 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 36^th 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

Where Has Free Motion Friday Gone? June 5, 2014
FMQ Madness!, March 16, 2015
Cindy Needham's Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts on Craftsy
Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing - Free Motion Quilting Design Videos
Celebrate - Fêtons 150 and Learning Quilt-A-Long (QAL)
Lone Tree 2 - Colour Unboxed Exhibition, January 24, 2017
Batik lap quilt - February Finishes, February 28, 2017
FMQ Garden & Pond posts

Spring is in the air with Free Motion Mavericks, March 13, 2019 to
Garden and Pond finished for Free Motion Mavericks, September 11, 2019

Pinwheels and Stars Baby Quilt: Baby Quilt at Free Motion Mavericks, May 13, 2020

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 Making, Colour & Inspiration Tuesday, Midweek Makers, Long Arm Learning, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Friday Foto Fun, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Peacock Party,

Patchwork & Quilts,

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!

Thursday, February 06, 2020

Free Motion Mavericks

Hi! Welcome to week 266 of the Free Motion Mavericks linking party!

A production of quilted journal covers

A lovely neutral cover

If birds can have their own special words for groups, then I choose a "production" for a group of quilted journal covers.😊

The very first one!

My own colourful
agenda cover

The newest members of the Production of journal covers

Using dot-to-dot quilting

A friend from the quilt guild gave me several bags of scraps. Some were much more than scraps since she decided to get rid of fabric that she would never use.

Well, I might not use those fabrics either, but for this project, I used the quilt panel fabric on the back and sewed the front of the journal cover using the bobbin thread.

I really like the effect of the dot-to-dot quilting without really having the fabric delineate the blocks. Once again I used variegated thread in the bobbin.

FMQ on this panel to make the
yellow journal cover

The supplies for making the
yellow journal cover

This fun coffee fabric has been FMQ. Now to make the Coffee Lover's journal cover.

Aren't these great? If they look
familiar it's because I've made a
few hexies with similar fabric

The blue-green polka dots will look
great as a background fabric

An update (February 9, 2020): My Coffee Lover's journal cover is finished. I'd rather update this post than write up another one, so here it is!

Coffee Lover's journal cover

The back of the Coffee Lover's journal cover

I just love the inside of this one!

Tall Tales Book block UFO

One Monthly Goal for February

Tall Tales Book block UFO

This month I will finish one of the Tall Tales Book blocks that I started making during my holidays last fall. You can check out the links below.

Oops, it would seem that I forgot to link up to the February OMG goal link up. Oh well, I still want to get these two done!

Related links

Finishing up One Monthly Goal - OMG, January 31, 2020
More quilted gifts, an OMG and a Christmas runner, December 26, 2019
Making a journal cover with practice piece, December 14, 2019
Free Motion Quilted Gifts with Christina Cameli on Bluprint
Tall Tale Book blocks - September 25, 2019 and October 10, 2019

Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Let's see what's going on out there! Friday Foto Fun, Beauties Pageant, Off the Wall Friday, Put Your Foot Down, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Colour and Inspiration Tuesday, Monday Making, What I Made Monday, and DrEAMi with Sandra at mmm quilts!

Free Motion Mavericks

We've had some great projects linked up last time - thanks so much for joining us. I'd like to give a special mention to Muv of Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing, my Free Motion Mavericks partner. Her free motion quilted piece, A Lane in May was undeniably frustrating to make, but I believe that it was ultimately a wonderful project. 😊 If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out.

Thursday, January 09, 2020

Sacred Geometry for Project Quilting at Free Motion Mavericks

It's that time of the year again - Project Quilting! Since it's the first Challenge of the 11th season (11.1), this week's challenge is Notably Numeric - celebrating all things numerical including geometry.

Project Quilting Challenge 11.1 - Notably Numbers

Flower of Life
Sacred Geometry

To be honest, my first reaction was oh... but then as I was reading, the word geometry leaped off the page. Not that I'm into geometry but I love hexagons (hexies) and recently learned about Shri Yantra, that intriguing pattern made of triangles. Like the proverbial rabbit hole that is the internet, that brought me to Sacred Geometry and finally the Flower of Life.

I think that I love the Orange Peel pattern almost as much as hexies. As you can see from my piece, if you're into quilting, the first thing that stands out are the lovely orange peel in this pattern. Well, after reading more about it, it turns out that the Flower of Life is made up of a series of circles! Yup. If you want to learn more about them, see Related links below.

After finding out that this was a series of circles,
I started drawing (see What I learned below)

How to draw a big circle around the
project? With a plastic lid of course!

My project is not quite done. I worked on it all evening on Sunday and created this without the circle. I found the right plastic container lid and then I had two circles!

The next step is making biased binding. I did find more fabric, so it's just a matter of doing it!

A Flower of Life done in free motion quilting

The deadline is Sunday but I would love to have it done by Saturday at the latest. If all goes well, I'm tempted to add small beads where the circles intersect. It's not a traditional thing to do, but it might be fun and pretty. I'll have to think about it.

What I learned

After learning about the Shri Yantra, I've been wanting to quilt one since it's composed of tons of triangles. It didn't take me long to realise that this was way above my ability, especially within a week. I'm really glad that I found the Flower of Life, which is not quite as complex.
It turns out that I'm not as inept in math as I thought. Once I found out that these were a series of circles, I actually figured out that the orange peels were created when the circles intersected at 60 and 120 degree angles. (I may have said that badly but I did draw it out! I was very impressed with myself).😊
After being too impressed with myself, I drew the pattern on the fabric with Frixion pens - and it left a "shadow" on the fabric! What to do? After a few attempts at different solutions such as appliqué, I finally decided to quilt the Flower of Life from the back of the quilt, so that the bobbin thread showed up on pristine fabric! I successfully did this in a couple of "large print wholecloth quilts". It really is a great technique.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Making a journal cover with practice piece

Don't you love practicing on something and then being able to use that practice piece to make a finished, usable project? That's what happened to my practice piece from last week's Free Motion Mavericks.

FMQ my practice piece

My piece went from this very bright poinsettia fabric to these "cat's eye" shapes with different types of feathers within and outside of the shapes.

FMQ using the leaves as templates

The pink bobbin thread produced this flower.

Finally, adding FMQ filler between the flowers, in white thread, resulted in this!

Adding swirls, paisleys and
echoes between the flowers

A close up of the free motion quitling

It was really great to be adding this filler FMQ between the flowers because I hadn't really done that in a very long time. It's so fun to just stitch and let the quilting do what it wants. 😊

Making a journal cover with the FMQ fabric

When I showed a friend what the quilted fabric looked like, I got such a great response that I decided to make her a journal cover!

I used Christina Cameli's Free-Motion Quilted Gifts course to make the journal cover. This is the same BluPrint (Craftsy) course that I used to make the fabric basket a couple of weeks ago.

This is the front of the journal, with the elastic keeping it closed

Back of the FMQ journal cover

The FMQ journal - front and back

Journal with replaceable booklets

Inside the journal

What I learned

As usual, Christina's instructions and explanations were great. I had to re-do a part, but that was my mistake.
I should have measured where to stitch the elastic - I was able to "fix" it but next time I'll measure!
I discovered fold-over elastics. I didn't have any, so I used a plain white elastic, but I'll be looking out for these.😊
I really want to make more of these journal covers. I bought a package of three booklets at Winners and will send my friend the replacement booklets with her journal cover. Now I have to go stock up on these.
This course has been amazing. I haven't made the zipper bag yet, but it's definitely going to get done...eventually. It's so hard to not get sidetracked from the stuff that I've actually committed to making! So many squirrels - so little time!