Friday, October 14, 2011

FMQ Practice 1

First of all, thank you so much for the kind words regarding Chad's father. His cancer made a reappearance almost two years ago and we have been fortunate to have this extra time with him. Originally, he was given only a few months because of how aggressive it was in taking over his lungs. I will be replying to e-mails as well. It is so easy for me to get behind with them.

Since today is Friday, Cindy at Fluffy Sheep Quilting is hosting a link party for those of us practicing free motion quilting. This has been on my list of things to master, but like so many other skills it has been pushed back. I think it's about time I jump in and what better way than with other beginners!

I didn't hear about it until the day of last week and wasn't able to practice The Wave at that time, so I decided to do that pattern along with this week's pattern: Drop Art.


The Wave FMQ Practice

My wave is not so wavy...


The Wave FMQ Practice

The back.


The Wave FMQ Practice




Drop Art FMQ Practice




Drop Art FMQ Practice

The back.


Drop Art FMQ Practice


I decided to keep these as swatches and so I put the name of each on the sample in Sharpie.

Overall, I found it took some time to get used to moving in any direction. I'm too used to straight, I guess! I do think my stitch length was consistant throughout and don't think I need to adjust the tension to do this. I followed the advice in the starting video and set my stitch length to 0 instead of dropping my feed dogs.

Since I was cutting swatches anyway, I cut up enough to last me a few months. No excuse not to do this each week, right?

9 comments:

Janine @ Rainbow Hare said...

I think those are looking great :)

Krista Schneider said...

Awesome!! Glad you joined in on this too :D

Looking good!

Pat Merkle said...

Great job! This is so much fun!

Toni said...

Looking good, Katie! I missed last week, too, so I tried the wave when I was doing these and mine didn't have much wave to it either. I'm definitely stuck in the straight line mentality!

Lynn said...

Your drops look great.

Cindy said...

Looking good! Your waves could use a bit of wave to them, but your drops look honestly and truly like drops! Your stitches look great - no birds nests, nice and even. Well done! So glad you could play along :)

Erin @ Billy Button Design said...

Fantastic!

mammafairy said...

What a good idea, cutting out swatches ready. I will have to try to make myself do that too.

Nicky said...

Glad you are joining in. You have made a great start and so wise to have your fabric ready for the next one!