Saturday, December 29, 2012

A year of FMQ Challenges

12Dec29sample I am finished! Done this month’s Free Motion Quilting Challenge over at Sew Cal Gal . It has been a great year of learning different FMQ techniques and, more importantly, overcoming my fear of FMQ. I still have a long, long way to go, I think, before I will be 100 per cent pleased with what I do, but I’m right now happy with what I have accomplished.

Our December Challenge was given by Patsy Thompson. Her web videos on how to FMQ for beginners and intermediates were the first I’d ever watched, and encouraged me to FMQ my first lap quilts way back when. She is not only inspirational with her designs, but also very generous with her helpful encouragement of others.

12Dec29template She also gave us quite the challenge – to use a piece of wholecloth and FMQ different borders around it, something I would never have considered doing. The border design was optional, although I stuck mostly to her suggestions, but we had to do the feathers. I guess I’m still afraid of feathers and I don’t use them apart from the Challenges. I do so like to mangle them. I guess more practice would make that better. She suggested that we use a flexible ruler to draw the lines for the feathers. I don’t have such a ruler, nor do I have access to one. So I grabbed an empty cracker box and used her design to make a template. Traced it with pencil, as I always do for these practices. (You can see that I have a hard time staying within the lines – story of my life!)

I still have a lot of work ahead of me, staying within the lines and travelling precisely over design lines, but at least I have the basics now, thanks to the FMQ Challenge. Thank you Patsy Thompson, and many, many thanks to Sew Cal Gal for organizing and hosting this 12 month challenge. Wander over here to see Patsy’s December tutorial and scroll down to the bottom to see how everyone made out for the final challenge.

Until next time,

3 comments:

  1. Wow, I think your feathers turned out great! Especially the way you brought them together in the "kissing zone". Mine turned out more like a game of Keep-Away, lol! Very pretty sampler, and your center flower is wonderful.

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