Quilt Along #39- Matrix

Made some progress with my 'Practice Quilt'.

But first a bit about the design for this week's Quilt Along Wednesday with Leah Day. The design is called Matrix and is one of those designs that I have been admiring the first time I found the Freemotion Quilting Project on the web. While lines always look so easy I never tried this one because I did not think that I would be able to follow lines in a consistent manner.  I have done some grid quilting before with the walking foot but do not enjoy it...too much marking and there are just too many threads to sew in after.

I had much more success this week with my quilting...I do not think I was in the right space for quilting last week's design. This week everything worked so much better. I even managed to stitch nicely in-the-ditch along the sides of the design. Almost got a bit suspicious...what is going on?...this is not usually that easy. Then a few needles broke and that was almost reassuring (yarn got caught up). I stitched the design in one of my remaining squares. I did not use my Freemotion Echo Quilting foot as I thought it was important to practice 'eyeballing ' the spaces between the lines. I have an open square FMQ foot and the judging of distances takes some practice.

Have a look...this turned out absolutely brilliant. I really like this and from now on this will be my grid of choice. So dynamic and interesting to look at. Should have tried this ages ago.

Matrix

I also liked the look of the half finished design even though it is just lines across the square...looks very effective, and yet so simple

As I was on a roll I continued on the sashings.  Used two of the designs I found in Angela Walters book 'Freemotion Quilting'.  Just some simple loops and a nice swirl scroll. They both work very well in the sashing (2 " wide).






















The way I am going I should get this quilt done by Xmas (only got one square left, the vertical sashings and part of the border). This quilt is interesting to look at with all the different designs and will be great to have around when looking for designs because you cannot only see the design but feel its texture and also have a good idea about the best size for the design.  At the moment I am thinking that I might do another one, as this really has been good fun to do.

Until next time

Karin

More FMQ Practice

Done a bit more FMQ practice. The first design is from Angela Walter's Book 'Free- Motion Quilting' and is called Concentric Circles. My squares are 8 inches which is a bit limiting, however I decided to give it a go. The design is surprisingly easy to stitch and looks great...fairly dense but great texture. I think this is about the size of the circles that is manageable. Any bigger and I reckon one looses direction...at least that is what happened to me on the domestic machine.

 And here is Circuit Board, a design that we have been doing earlier on Leah Day's Quilt Along Wednesdays. I like the design but had not yet done it on the practice quilt. Bit of avoidance behaviour on my part, because I basically suck at it. Funny though, the design continues to look good even if you stitched it a bit wonky.

Karin