Flowers in my garden

Finished quilting this beauty for a client. I can't believe this is her first quilt. The stitching is so neat and the blocks, perfect.

Did lots of free motion quilting on this one after some SID around the green 'paths'; lotus buds in each of the four corners inside the squares and stippling all around them. I used the BSR, the patented Bernina Stitch Regulator, and it made the FMQ-ing so so so smooth. I must've saved boatloads in terms of effort and energy expended! And no shoulder pain ! I don't think I ever, EVER want to do FMQ without the BSR. Ever !

Finished the border with multiple wavy lines, done with a walking foot.

 

 

It has the most amazing texture and its a piece I can finally say I am proud of. Every quilt I do usually leaves me a wee bit dissatisfied, but this one, I'm pretty happy with ! :-)

 

Happy quilting ! Or whatevering !

 

Pink Posies 1

As promised in my previous post, here's a look at 'Pink Posies 1'. Of course it didn't have a numeral at the end of its name then !

Size 48"x60"













Nice? Glad those orphan pinwheels found a place :-).

Birds of a feather

How to get two birds with one stone?  Easy. Go where birds of a feather flock together. Like here. Like this. With ONE post, I shall document this quilt that I made for a Wholecloth Quilt Challenge on my very active and very inspiring group Desi Quilters ..AND ..I shall link this up with my DQ friend Chumkie's Two color linky party on her blog 'My favourite things'. Ha ha, one shot, two birds!

This is a one piece wholecloth quilt with an interesting bird print. I outlined the birds, about 300 of them, with Free Motion Quilting (FMQ), once along the top of each bird and echoed twice around the bottom.

 Though with the lime green backing and the multi-coloured binding, I'm not so sure if it qualifies for the Two-Color linky party ?!

Oh well, Chumkie, do let me know. Meanwhile I shall go talk about the weather.

Shutting up and wiggling

I rather like Leah's Mantra - 'Shut up and quilt'. So without further ado, here's my second attempt at shutting up and wiggling..

(Here's my first if you want to take a look)

I wiggled up and I wiggled down and I wiggled all around. I found myself agreeing with Leah on...
-my machine feels better with the feed dogs up
-my hands really ARE better at certain curves than others and I need to practice getting my machine to match that
-I tend to get lost/stuck with random wiggling and prefer some method in the madness instead.

Now that I had wiggled a bit, I felt tempted to do the same with the leaf pattern that I was trying to learn as part of the 2012 FMQ challenge...

Leaves? Heart? Butts? Never mind :-). I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Now all that I need to do is perfect it :o).

Linking this up with Quilt Along Wednesdays on Leah's Free Motion Quilting Project. Loving it!!

Its a bird! Its a plane!..no, its FMQ!!

Now why isn't this....

...looking like THIS?....

Yup, more practice needed. But whats practice without some play? :-)

Now that looks kinda cool I think. Maybe this is how I'll make my final block for the 2012 FMQ challenge this month. (button on the right --->) Of course, AFTER I practice some :-).

Happy playing!

The secret and the elusive foot

I have stumbled upon the quilting world's best kept secret...Quilting is only a measly one-fifth part of QUILTING!! Who would've thought that to be a good quilter involves :
a) One-fifth Math. Yes, even if you are a very free-spirited crazy-quilting (no pun intended) kinda quilter.
b) One-fifth Photography. Yes, even if it is with a miserable 2 MP phone camera. You just HAVE to shoot your work (again no pun intended) as it progresses.
c) One-fifth Screen-Staring. Yes, even if its called blogging, blog-hopping, pinteresting, flick(r)ing (nope, no pun) ideas off the web.
d) One-fifth Ironing. Yes, very very pressing matter (No really, no pun intended at all).

So I guess if I just spruce up on that minor one-fifth bit that is quilting, I shall be well on my way to being a great quilter :-).

Well, the thing is, I'm basically a straight line walking foot kinda quilter. Not out of choice really, but because I don't yet know how to FMQ. Again, not out of choice, but because I couldn't get my hands on a compatible FMQ foot for my machine !! Most elusive, that foot. After days, nah, months of looking, I finally convinced a retailer that he HAD to get me these fancy feet. And he did! And I bought them all!! So here's my progress at FMQing:

Day 1: I just admire my feet and can't get enough of looking at them:

Day 2: I have no idea what I am doing, but boy, am I happy doing it !

Day 3: Ok, I plan a bit. The sandwich has no intention of listening to me though:

Day 4: I watch a few videos of Leah Day from The free motion quilting project and try again:

Ah well, hope floats. Some day I shall be good. For now I'm just glad I still wanna keep learning something new.

Happy learning, people! Hope you had/have a great Christmas!!

P.S.: My stumbling on the secret may not have had anything to do with the elusive foot.