A Contemporary Baby Quilt: Double Circles

I love circle quilts, I've sort of got a touch of circle mania.  I've got a couple (or four) others in the works.

This one is a baby quilt that I have listed on Etsy.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/110564921/fun-toddler-baby-crib-quilt-double?ref=cat1_gallery_35

The circles were done using the freezer paper method to form the circles.  The circles were first basted in place, and then top stitched to make them very secure.

Baby quilts need to be tough . . . it is always my hope that baby quilts get lots of use and love and dragging about.

The plaid is the backing fabric . . . and a close up of the quilting.

I've never been into 'baby' fabrics.
I like doing baby quilts with grown up fabrics.

The little green tea cups fabric is one of my favorites in the quilt.

Gee, it's cute.
I love making cute things.

Another Etsy Quilt: Batik Double Pinwheels

Sold, on it's way to it's new home!   https://www.etsy.com/listing/109743592/handmade-contemporary-batik-cotton-baby

This is the second double pinwheel I've made.  The first one was a Christmas present for my sister-in-law.

I like the border of double pinwheels around a field of pinwheels.

Close up of the fabrics on the back

Close up of the quilting

Another close up showing the variety of the fabrics

Crumpled up on the couch . . . how the quilt looks
when you go get a snack during a commercial!

My Quilts: Artichoke Garden 1999

There used to be artichokes in my garden, but they didn't make it one winter.
But I've got an Artichoke Garden quilt.
The colors remind me of the colors when artichokes bloom.
I learned with this quilt that blue is a zippy color to add to a color pallet.
It was unexpectedly very pleasing.

One of my favorite borders - rolling spirals.  The body of the quilt is pebbles and feathers, the first time I had tried doing either.
Although the quilting looks like a first effort, I still love it.

This is the last FMQ quilting I did on the Bernina, all the tugging and adjusting wore me out.  And the resulting jerky spots in the quilting were disappointing.  It was shortly after completing this quilt that I got the Pfaff GrandQuilter.

The back . . . one big artichoke.  Really it's just a bear's paw
with a log cabin-ish paw pad.

The thin sashing is what really makes this quilt I think. And the blue sky fabric.
The darker green fabric meant to represent leaves and stalks,
also has a picket fence sort of look.

This quilt was designed in EQ5.

Magna Doodle: How to Teach Your Arms a Free Motion Quilting Pattern

Magna Doodles . . . they are not just for the kids!

It's one thing to have a FMQ idea for your quilt, it's another thing to execute it as it is in your mind's eye.

I used to use lots of paper 'teaching' my hand the motion needed for FMQ.  The magna doodle saves me paper and it's an easy erase for starting over.

Tessellating Hearts . . . easy and fast

Practicing helps to figure out what you need to do (or not to do) to turn
the pattern when you come to the edge.  The bottom right turn above is not a good turn.
Need more practice.

FMQ is actually not about the hands, it's about the arms.

When teaching yourself to FMQ, 'draw' with your arms as if they and the quilt are one.  Your hands are only what connect you to the quilt.

If you FMQ from your arms instead of your hands, the stitches will be much smoother and more even.

Flowers and Leaves

Practice helps show you where you may have gaps at the quilt edges,
like at the top and the bottom left corner.

Feathers . . . I find feathers very difficult to 'learn'.

As our penmanship is unique to each of us,
so I think is how we 'write' FMQ feathers.
I would like my feathers to look like someone else's,
but they always seem to look like MY feathers.
Feathers remain a skill in progress for me.