Early in the year I was lucky enough to stumble across SewCalGal’s free motion quilting challenge. The caliber of instructors to provide tutorials were just amazing. I had only just gotten into quilting the summer of 2011 and had wanted to learn free motion quilting so this challenge was perfect for me. The resources online are incredible, but this challenge provided insights from so many wonderful instructors and provided so many viewpoints.
I want to extend a HUGE “THANK YOU” to SewCalGal for hosting this challenge and to each of the instructors for sharing their time and experience with us.
Right: Some of my practice sandwiches for the year, and Trapunto detail
[The photos were taken with my new Nikon D5100, but still appear too dark. I’ll have to keep working on that.]
It was actually fun reviewing the year in order to write these posts. I kept thinking, “Oh! that was my favorite!” Then I would get to another and think the same thing. The instructors were just incredible! Did I mention that?
Even though I still have a long way to go, I look at the first samples and can see the improvements I’ve made. There were a couple sandwiches I couldn’t find and had to redo in order to get photos. They were so much easier now. Although, feathers are still such a challenge for me. Diane Gaudynski makes them look so easy and so beautiful. Mine are just pathetic. I was looking at my initial attempts and HAD to recreate one to photo. What you see in the collage above was just quilted today. As a matter of fact, I believe I will show you what I mean! Below are some of my attempts to date. Sad, just sad.
Unfortunately, I’m still working on December and wanted to get this post entered before the deadline. December is borders and I’ve already started playing with designs. Christmas totally sidetracked me from the FMQ fun. I really enjoyed watching all the other submissions. Some are just incredibly fabulous!
Many of the tutorials were still up last time I looked. If you’re interested in FMQ you really should check out the SewCalGal site. Again, thanks so very much to SewCalGal and to all the instructors. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge.
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