a little experiment

Inspired by this post from Candy, I tried a little experiment in FMQ stitch sketching on the side of one of FMQ pieces.

Not too bad for a first attempt!

FMQ class

A couple of week's ago, I mentioned that I was "off" and asked you to guess where.

I was at a free motion quilting class with Kim Bradley. I loved the class but found a whole day very tiring on the brain and body.

We were shown some lovely work but I forgot to take my camera.

Kim is an excellent teacher. I thought we'd be starting with stippling or meandering and heading into pebbles. I was wrong.

We started by working with our walking foot.

In this version we followed pre-drawn lines then quilted an equal distance from those lines.
Some people did this by pre-drawing, mine is done freehand.

And this is my freehand flower done by a technique called McTavishing.

Then we "graduated" to the darning/quilting foot. All I can say is that it's not as easy as it sounds or looks!

To many people's surprise, we worked with our feed dogs up (to give us more control).

Pattern 1: apple blossom.
Pattern 2: leaves (they were suppose to be rounded with points)

Pattern 2a: gum (eucalypt) leaves

Pattern 3: maple leaves
There were other patterns but I think you've seen enough of my squiggles!

My fall back pattern whenever I'm getting frustrated (this was practice at home):
At least I think this one is improving!

More practice needed here!