Thursday, July 14, 2022

Books everywhere on Free Motion Mavericks

My favourite summer pastime is reading. In this post, we are celebrating all kinds of books - the free motion quilted (FMQ) and the paper pieced kind 😊

FMQ books of the Version 2.0 kind

I wanted to FMQ something on my son's quilt but it had to be simple and relatively mindless. As I looked at the PowerPoint map of the Version 2.0 quilt, I realised that I could quilt a whole bunch of books onto one of the maroon stripes. Yeah!

FMQ books following the patterns copied
onto Golden Thread quilting paper

I started by tracing 5 or 6 images of books from the internet. From the first tracing, I made a second copy and then pinned them onto the stripe.

All of the traced images are pinned on the stripe

Eventually I had to remove some of the traced images since they were getting in the way of the FMQ. It was easy to pin them back when I was ready to quilt them.

I wish I could say that it was easy and mindless to quilt but that would not be true! Since the quilt is queen size, it's awkward to quilt to begin with. I figured out that I had to start at a top corner of an image so that I could work my way forward and actually see the tracing. I also quilted all of the books sideways since it was the easiest way to place the quilt within the machine.

Here are a couple more pictures!

All kinds of different books -
some even have a feather pen!

Many books as well as the night sky

Update on the Summer Book Club

I'm quite behind on the making of my Tall Tales blocks but I did manage to make ten so far.

Here are my ten lovely book blocks

What I learned

I'm glad that I ended up doing some FMQ on my son's Version 2.0. It's so lovely to see the different areas slowly being filled! It's very encouraging.
Next time, I think that I'll use a thin marker to trace the images so that they'll be easier to see.
There is a blue stripe next to the maroon one that I may tackle next. I'm going to FMQ some herbs since it's something that Stéphane is growing. I hope that he has better luck than me! I hope to practice drawing these and then quilt them without tracing paper.
I'm not going to predict how my Summer Book Club will go but I think that if I make the blocks in an assembly-line fashion, that I'll have better luck with them. I did make a huge effort to concentrate on the last block and it did go well, but I still used the seam ripper a little bit.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 388 of Free Motion Mavericks. I hope that you're enjoying your summer so far!

Gail, of Quilting Gail, finished her Pop Star Quilt using mmm quilts' pattern during the QAL. If you didn't see it, here it is.

Gail's beautifully quilted Pop Star quilt

It's your turn 😊

Tuesday, June 07, 2022

June's OMG and Summer Book Club QAL

A quick post to announce that I'm going to be playing with fun fabrics as part of Kate Basti's The Summer Book Club QAL.

Making more book blocks

I'm thrilled to have found out about The Summer Book Club QAL on Instagram. It uses one of my favourite foundation paper piecing blocks - the Tall Tales Quilt Block. Kate Basti has designed the block and it can be purchased on her Etsy shop (links in Related links below). The pattern is only $1, and she's donating all of her sales of the pattern to the Ronald McDonald House Charities until the end of 2022.

The Summer Book Club QAL on Instagram
with Kate Basti (@katebasti)

I made a few of these blocks as minis in 2019 (feels like so long ago!). I've always wanted to make a quilt of them, since they look amazing on Instagram (#so this is my chance. The block sews up easily and is great for featuring beautiful fabric.

The QAL runs for 8 weeks.

Week 1: Decide Your Project & Pull Your Fabric
Week 2–7: Make Tall Tales Blocks
Week 8: Assemble Your Project

Week 1: post (an) image(s) of our fabric on Instagram. Here is my fabric pull. As you can see I have lots of choices. I'll be choosing as I go along. I'll be using a variety of solid colours for the book borders.

Critters fabrics - some of my absolute favourites

Misc. fabrics, from cute to books to everything else

Travel fabrics

You may have noticed the small frame that I made to view the fabrics since I will be fussy-cutting them.

Solids for the block borders

More solids

Here are the blocks that I've made. I love that I can add so much to these book covers. Some have appliqué while another is mostly free motion quilted (FMQ).

Paddington book mini for my daughter of course!
for the Nifty Novelties Blog Hop

"The Earth is not flat" book for my son
during the Summer Book Club QAL of 2019

And a few mini book blocks for my colleagues!

Mon jardin with FMQ

A Fantastical Book Block with appliqué

Bambi book, also made during
the Summer Book Club QAL of 2019

June's One Monthly Goal (OMG)

My goal this month is to make 10 blocks for the Summer Book Club QAL. I'll report back here at the end of the month (or before if I need to ~~showoff~~ share 😊)

What I learned

I love this versatile block and hope to be inspired to make a whole quilt of it.
I'm hoping to use a few techniques, but since it will be a quilt, I won't be adding embellishment (I think!)
Ten blocks may be ambitious but I really want to give myself the opportunity to play!