You can find my original goal list for the second quarter HERE
Now this quilt is an old UFO...to be exact this is from 2012 when I participated in Leah Day's weekly FMQ challenge for the entire year.
Dimensions: 49in x 58 1/2in
Materials: Cotton fabric; Polyester wadding
Polyester thread used for FMQ designs
28 different FMQ designs which can be found on Leah Day's website
I was new to blogging and thought that this was just what I needed to consolidate my emerging FMQ skills. We were given weekly designs to stitch out and linked up every Wednesday to show off how we went and to ask questions. This was a lot of fun and I did learn so much from this QAL. Looking at the weekly stitching tasks I decided after a few months or so to throw a quilt together to stitch my designs on. I think some quilters at the time did their samples as a Quilt-As-You-Go project, however for me it made more sense to have a quilt ready that I just could pull out from week to week to stitch my designs on.
I had some 20 tone-on-tone fat quarters just perfect for the quilt and just chucked this together with a coordinating sashing and a border and...voila, I was ready to go every week! This was an enormous time saver for me and also a neat and tidy option for all those designs. I literally covered the entire quilt with FMQ designs...when I had run out of space in the squares, I moved my designs into the sashing and finally also covered the whole border with those wiggly lines (forgot now what that design was called). I was impressed when it was finished...however, somehow this ended up rolled up in the cupboard. All it needed was a binding...no idea why I did not complete this. Needless to say, I did not have any coordinating fabric left and had to purchase some binding fabric for this to finish it off.
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| How pretty is the Matrix design in the bottom left corner |
This was the nicest thing to finish off. As I was sewing the binding on, I admired my somewhat wonky handiwork from years ago...I literally could feel the transition that I must have made at that point...from being overly perfectionist and fearful to stuff up a quilt to just allowing myself to go for it and stitch your heart out. I used white thread (Polyester because Leah is a bit of a rebel) for the most part and it often involved backtracking along the ditch...definitely did not hit the ditch consistently and have all these white little mishaps all over the place. I could see the hesitation at times in the design, but I could also see the absolute joy in the stitching to be free from this ridiculous fear of stuffing things up.
I beautified my binding a bit for this quilt (see previous post) with some decorative stitching just for something a bit different and this was the perfect opportunity to give that a try. That turned out fantastic and I am really happy with the end result...the quilt looks great...interesting...a bit crazy...and definitely less than perfect, but there is something really satisfying about having finished this quilt.
and also
Linking up to the FAL2016 - Second Quarter Linky Party over at She Can Quilt
Karin
You have some very nice free motion quilting here. What was the name of the pattern of your quilt?
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful way to practice your FMQ! Love this idea. On behalf of the global 2016 FAL hosts, thanks for playing along!
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome project! I need something like that QAL to get me to work on my FMQ skills. I've tried Leah's Craftsy classes, but it doesn't have the accountability of a QAL.
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