free motion quilting – Page 5 – Sew Bittersweet Designs

A Whirl of Swirls

13 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, free motion quilting, Sew BitterSweet Designs Patterns / By Melissa Dunworth

My weekend, at least my sewing time this weekend, went by in a whirl of swirls! I decided that I was going to quilt my Lovely Year of Finishes June project with swirls. I’m doing them in all of the negative space, which for this particular quilt, means a whole lot of swirls.

When it comes to Free Motion Quilting I am just not ready yet to jump in and go, so I always bust out some practice muslin and batting and get going. You might recognize this practice piece because it has been used before, for my last FMQ project.

To learn how to swirl without beating my head against the wall, and really, why recreate the wheel, I headed on over to The Free Motion Quilting Project by Leah Day and watched one of her videos, then I was off and running. I am extra excited about FMQ these days because I just signed up for Leah Day’s Craftsy class, Free Motion Fillers, Vol. 1. So far I have only completed lesson one, but I am excited to learn more about using my machine to quilt a large quilt and even more designs.

After I felt confident I went to town. Here is a pic of my quilt in the machine:

Here is a pic out of the machine. I now know what I am going to do with the rest of the areas. I will be starting with the white frames and doing Leah’s Design for Spiral Chain.

I am so excited to be not only making progress on my June goal, but also conquering another FMQ design. My goal is to work up the confidence to quilt a couple of my larger quilts on my home machine. Hopefully all this practice will help me meet that goal.

What has everyone else been up to? Conquered any sewing fears lately?

Perfect is boring!

19 Comments / free motion quilting, quilt / By Melissa Dunworth

You always hear “Practice Makes Perfect” well after practicing FMQ flowers all day on Saturday I decided that Perfect is BORING! It is the little variations that make each flower special!

I started trying to just make a flower and not having a clue what I was doing and finally I decided I was making this too difficult and there was no reason to re-invent the wheel. I remembered a friend telling me she watches Leah Day videos and then uses the techniques in her quilts, so I headed to The Free Motion Quilting Project and found a flower pattern that I liked and looked totally doable for my beginner set of FMQ skills. I chose the Sunflower pattern and then scaled it back a bit because I was working with much smaller squares.

Here’s where I started – the fabric is muslin with batting in between. I always have muslin on hand because I like to use it as a quilt back, the scraps work great for FMQ practice!

I decided I was finally getting the hang of it, no, they were not perfect, but they were pretty, and after all, perfect is boring. I just went for it! On Sunday I quilted the Chemo Quilt for my mom. I plan to give it to her for Mother’s Day, she will be up here 2 weeks after which means I get to give it to her in person. Here’s how a few of the flowers turned out! (The yellow and orange fabric is the backing.)

I’m so happy I took the plunge and went for it. No two flowers in nature are exactly the same and I love how these turned out. Do you practice before you start quilting?

Happy New Year

6 Comments / EQ7, free motion quilting, it's sew kiki, quilt along, Quilt Patterns, SewHappyGeek / By Melissa Dunworth

I haven’t been around much lately – I’m sorry. My hubby has been on leave from the Army the past two weeks and when he is home I liked to stay as plugged into my family as possible. In fact, he doesn’t actually go back to work until tomorrow. Would you believe that this means I haven’t so much as touched my sewing machine in 17 whole days!!! Also, we have been traveling – we went to the San Francisco Bay Area for Christmas and spent a few days in Lake Tahoe too.

I posted on Friday the projects that I finished in 2011 and I posted some goals. This week I am getting right to work.

Here are a few of the things I will be working on in the coming months from across the blogosphere:

Starting today – It’s Sew Kiki’s About Town Bag

Starting this week – SewHappyGeek’s Sew. Happy. Quilt QAL

I am especially excited about this one for 2 reasons: 1 – all kinds of new skills, I mean a Dresden Plate block?!? I have been dieing to learn how to make one and Jenna is going to teach me how! 2 – I am doing one of the tutorials – Block 6 – look for it on January 24th over on SewHappyGeek. I can’t tell you how tickled I was when Jenna asked me!

Also starting this week, yesterday actually – SewCalGal’s Free Motion Quilt Challenge

There are so many great projects going on around the quilting blogosphere this year that I couldn’t help but jump on the band wagon for a few, but I don’t want you to think that I am not working on anything of my own…because I have been very busy playing with EQ7 while on vacation!

I have two different patterns in the works right now, both of which I am hoping to sell, but I will be needing a couple of pattern testers – so if you are at all interested – please please please let me know! I am also working on a baby quilt for my sister-in-law (she doesn’t read this blog so I can actually post about it when I get closer to done!), a quilt for my niece and a few other projects! Get ready for it people 2012 has STARTED!

NOTE: Don’t forget, I am one of the bloggers who is going to lose Google Friend Connect in March 2012, please take a moment and follow me via Bloglovin’, Facebook, RSS or networked blogs. You are important to me and I want to be able to stay in contact with you! Check my side bar for all the best ways to stay in touch after GFC goes bye bye!

It’s Sew Kiki Blog Swap

4 Comments / free motion quilting, halloween, holiday, it's sew kiki, table runner / By Melissa Dunworth

Today I have a little treat for our Brother Lovers – a blog swap with Kiera from It's Sew Kiki! I have been following Kiera's blog for months and we recently became friends when I asked her for some help on a project. We thought it would be a lot of fun to swap our blogs for the day. She is sharing an adorable Halloween project – which is perfect because you will have plenty of time to get your holiday sewing in BEFOREHAND! Take it away Kiera!

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Good Morning!

Thank you so much to Melissa and Sunni for so generously letting me guest post! Don't you just love their blog? These ladies rock!

My name is Kiera and my blog is It's Sew Kiki It's my little part of the Internet where I focus on sewing and quilting. I've got some great tutorials and free patterns. Please come and visit!

Today I'm going to share how to make this cute little Halloween Table Runner

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Of course you can make this with any fabric. It would be a great scrap project. Get the know how after the jump!
Give Me More

Work It Wednesday

2 Comments / free motion quilting, machine applique, work in progress, work it wednesday / By Melissa Dunworth

Is it hump day already?!? Woohoo! That means the week is almost over and Easter is just a few days away. Now that I have finished with all my Easter presents and mailed off the ones for my nieces and nephews, I am back to finishing up the Butterfly Quilt.

For those who are new to the blog, the Butterfly Quilt is the first quilt I have ever designed and it is for my daughter Anne.

Last night I worked on the free-motion quilting aspect of the quilt. It took me about 3 hours but I was able to get it done and it turned out GREAT!
I practiced a lot before I actually had the nerve to try on the quilt. Here are some pictures of my practice piece.

For some reason Blogger and Picasa are not playing nice and will not let me properly rotate my pictures 🙁

I practiced a lot before breaking out the quilt itself. I tried stencils and free motion and decided that as a novice at free-motion quilting, for this special quilt I would stick with free motion curly-cues.

Here are some pictures of finished butterflies:

I machine quilted only the butterfly outlines, not the squares that were machine appliqued and I really do love the overall effect. Next step taking off the extra backing and batting, then binding and handwork. Wish me luck!

What are you working on today?