Freemotion Quilting Friday

Looking at Leah's Goddess Quilt, I began to think about what message I would like to give to myself this year and without hesitation I thought "Be kind to yourself". Coming into the New Year I already had started to feel the subtle pressure of joining in on several different things, plus have about five different projects of my own in my head (and two already started) and also have to complete some tasks that are leftover from last year. As I have a tendency to stretch myself too thin all the time, I thought that I might put on the brakes a bit for a while. For the time being I will concentrate on the tasks that I have set myself for the beginning of the year. I will follow along on the progress of the Goddess quilt and see whether I have some time later on, but if I start that now, everything else will just fall behind and I will become hopelessly overwhelmed. Maybe I just do a little practice sampler again to try out different designs. Not sure yet.

My new FMQ project is a Wholecloth quilt, albeit in its infant stages. Have played with the idea for a while, however must say that I do not have any experience with this. I took my little design and played around with it and managed to come up with an idea for the centre. The next problem was how to draft this into a whole design that I can transfer to fabric. Played around with paper for a while but in the end decided that I needed to get it drawn into the computer so that I could resize it and print out a quarter section of it for marking onto fabric.

I had some time over Christmas to tackle this and here is my first unpolished attempt:

This needs serious adjustment as the little hook picture does not fill out each square, hence just stands disconnected. However, on the upside, this gives me something to work from...

Have no idea on how big to make this, but started out with each hook being about 4 - 5 inches. Also seeing it in print, I thought that I might need something in each corner. Actually finally getting it into the computer was great as it allowed me to play around with it and try different orientations and arrangements.

I like this as a centre...no idea yet what I will do in the surrounding area. Also got a bit discouraged the other day when I started to look around on the internet, however had to remind myself, this will be my little wholecloth and it may just turn out very simple and plain and that  will be alright. For some reason I am a bit fixated on this. Isn't it strange how some things just need to be pursued...

Linking up to Leah Days Freemotion Quilting Friday




Until next time

Karin