Seeing double

That’s enough of the FMQ for a few days! After I finished these two blocks for this week's Free Motion Challenge over at Leah Day’s blog, I took the free motion gadgets off the sewing machine and put my piecing foot back on. Back to work on the Mexican Star and maybe a practice tote bag or two. Too much of that up close and personal Free Motion Quilting might leave me with my eyes permanently crossed.

Last week’s challenge was another step in stippling – using it to fill in the shapes we had outlined. It was much harder to use the row technique on this one since there really wasn’t much room to get into the row routine. My stippling looks pretty rough as I kept forgetting which direction I was heading in. Not a consistent size, but not too far off. What was really bothering me about this was the variegated thread I used. The thread itself was fine, but the variegation was distracting me. Whenever the dark thread would show up, it would sort of throw me off track. A good lesson for me in when not to use a variegated thread.

The overall effect of the pattern is interesting – watching the thread add colour to the plain material. I think my stitches are becoming more even as my hands and feet are working together more and more. Knock wood, I haven’t had the tension issues that others have been having. I had them constantly with my old mechanical Janome, but my new gal is doing just fine.

So many possibilities now on how to quilt that Mexican Star. I’d better hurry up and get it done.

Until next time,