My quilting thoughts and inspirations sprinkled with a glimpse of life down on the farm

Thursday, October 25, 2012

October Free Motion Quilt Challenge

This month's tutor for SewCalGal's FMQ challenge was Teri Lucas. She encouraged us to have a play and, after 'writing' our name, to fill our square with motifs and free-form quilting.
 First up we were encouraged to have a practise on paper. As you can see, I was impatient to get to the machine, however, the practise did make me realise I had to fill my space wisely - on paper I ended up with 11 different motifs and my page was only half full!!
Paper practise.
This month I was also grateful to all those organised quilters who had done their piece early; I got a lot of ideas from looking at their pictures which helped me to understand what I wanted to achieve. (Thank you fellow quilters!!)

 I must say, I had a blast with this!! I loved it!! I did a few guidelines with a marker pen e.g. my name,  feather spines and the nautilus shell 'spine', but apart from that I just sewed and made it up as I went (Gulp!). When I got sick of a design, or colour I ended it and started afresh with a new idea.
This was the first time I had done much in the way of echo quilting - it is completely uneven but when you look at the piece as a whole, the 'little imperfections' barely show.


Teri suggested we try different threads and weights, and also a satin top, and 2 layers of batting (for the poof!). I stuck with the threads I already have (Sulky, Aurifil and Mettler Poly Sheen) and just a layer of cotton batting but I am keen to experiment more in this area.
I used fine Mettler Seralene in the bobbin throughout.
A big thank you to Teri and SewCalGal for this month's inspiration. I enjoyed it a lot, and learnt a lot , too. Roll on next month!!
Happy creating everyone, and thanks for stopping by,

18 comments:

  1. You've inspired me, Raewyn. Your piece looks great! I wasn't thinking I would do this one because I don't have a variety of threads, battings and fabrics. But I guess I can just do it with what I have, like you did. Looks like fun!

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  2. That looks amazingly good. Well done Raewyn!
    Cheers,

    Jeanneke.

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  3. Wow!!! You have done a magic job! I love all the different threads, and the lonely horse shoe!Maybe one of your horses threw a shoe??

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  4. Wow that looks great and fun also.
    Liking all the different coloured threads. Good on you!!

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  5. Well done Raewyn, it is all looking good from where I am sitting.

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  6. Wowww,thats it great.
    I like the coloured threads.
    Hugs Gitta

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  7. Raewyn, you are doing an awesome job at FMQ! You were very brave to jump right in and the results are beautiful. Well done!

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  8. Oh Raewyn...yours turned out fantastic!! I forgot to try the satin; I must do that.

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  9. Beautiful job with this challenge! Looking forward to stitching out my sketches, hopefully over the weekend.

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  10. thanks for stopping by to see my challenge.
    Yours is awesome and I see you tried the shell. It was actually pretty easy.
    I looked at other people's challenge too before I got started. Some really talent.

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  11. I love it! What an excellent exercise. :-)

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  12. Oh Raewyn, I love what you've done. You're already a master at hand stitching and it looks as if you are on your way to mastering FMQ! It's lovely.

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  13. Wonderful Raewyn - No need to gulp :) You did great!!

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  14. Raewyn your October challenge piece is very pretty. Bravo...very well done.

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  15. I forgot all about this month's FMQ exercise. But thanks for your post and what you learned. I'm sure that will be helpful. I hope to try it before the end of the month.

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  16. Wow, you've done a magnificent work here! So beautiful!

    Hugs,
    Tatyana

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