Free Motion Quilting Adventure

 In January 2021 I enrolled in the Free Motion Quilting Academy taught by HollyAnne Knight of String and Story. This is a twelve week course that you can follow along and work at your own pace as life happens.  My intent was to blog my way through the course, and I think I mentioned it in past posts, but life happens, so I'm summarizing here.

First task was to create thirty or so practice sandwiches - a great opportunity to utilize the 'what were you thinking' fabric and fat quarters in your stash. I created mine using muslin on one side and odd fabrics on the other.

Then came the practice - lots of doodling on paper and fabric. I took an extended break and then started back up doodling on paper and fabric again before I started the Sampler quilt.

First step was to find a pleasing layout and turn the layercake into a quilt. I added a few additional fabrics and spent an afternoon auditioning layouts. For our final project we needed to include all thirty motifs on the sampler quilt.

I sketched all the motifs into a 1.5 inch square grid, then cut them apart and spent some time rearranging until I found a layout that worked for me.  Closeups of the quilting can be found here. I created my quilting plan because I knew that I wanted to distribute the dense and less dense blocks throughout the quilt - and to try to avoid putting similar motifs next to one another. Plus, I reduce the chance of skipping a motif or missing one altogether.  The first five went on the quilt in October - and the last 25 from December 31-January 2.

I took advantage of a snowy day to utilize my neighbor's fence as a backdrop. I am very pleased with the finished quilt. This will live in our living room. Those of you who know me, see that I deviated from my usual garnet/gold palette.

The other project for graduation is a fat quarter sized whole cloth quilt. The primary guideline is that you have to use multiple motifs in an intentional manner. Looking at the work of past graduates is inspiring and gave me lots of ideas of what to do. I thought of several options - including my sister's chickens. Then I settled on an abstract corgi. And back to my happy colors.

My first step was to find a silhouette that works for me and enlarged it as far as I could on and 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, and then used a light pad to enlarge it a few more times by tracing around it. I cut it out in freezer paper and ironed the freezer paper onto my background.  I added the frame, with mitered corners for contrast and to model the types of signs I'll see in our upcoming Rally Obedience activities with Serendipity. The batting is an offcut from one of the previously completed quilts, so I'm not sure which brand it is. Backing came from my 'what was I thinking' pile of fabrics. It is a nice fabric, but, well, you know...

Under the needle it went (HQ Sweet Sixteen). I started off stitching around my freezer paper silhouette. It didn't stick as well as I had hoped, and the foot knocked under it a bit - so rather than pull out stitching, I worked my way around the body again to fix some of the issues with her topline and then filled in the body stitching.  Gold 50 weight WonderFil Konfetti thread. A combination of gingkos, paisleys, and swirls to add texture to the coat, and a little fill on the white parts of the dog. There is some fuzzy stitching along the ruff and pants because Corgis are fuzzy little beasts. There is also some Corgi fluff quilted into the stitching that I'm gradually removing because that is inevitable when you live with a Corgi.

I added feathers and McTavishing for texture around the dog using a garnet/red WonderFil Konfetti 50 weight along with a row of pebbles just inside the frame, and then switched back to gold for woodgrain on the frame.

After binding, it was time to recruit Gus for a photo shoot. He is great at getting Sera to look at the camera, but she was still unimpressed by the process.

I am very pleased with this course. Something clicked for me this time. It could have been the structure of doodle on paper and then on fabric. I've tried getting to know my machine in the past with much less success. I am now looking forward to finishing many of the tops in my pile and experimenting with new motifs and designs along the journey.

In addition to teaching the 30 motifs, HollyAnne has a great week on quilting plans - and also offers Quilting Plan challenges through String and Story periodically. She is a great cheerleader for her Quilting Rockstars and has built a community on Facebook of very supportive quilters as we cheer one another along.

My One Monthly Goal for January was to complete both of the graduation projects! Done!  

I am linking to the January One Monthly Goal, hosted by Elm Street Quilts