Are you Looking to Hone Your Free Motion Quilting Skills?

January 10th, 2020

If you are looking to advance your free motion quilting skills, then you’ve got to check out Blueprint’s new campaign called 28 Days to Better Free Motion Quilting.

Blueprint has taken lessons from 11 of its top free motion quilting instructors and organized these lessons into a 28 day program designed to advance your skills and provide you with fresh and new free motion quilting design challenges!  Isn’t this an incredible idea?!!  The lessons begin with easier designs and then build your skills to more complex designs.

Here’s the breakdown of lessons by week:

Week 1: Lines and Curves  (Days 1-7)

Kick things off with simple designs that get you comfortable moving fabric around your machine. Start with simple scribbles, then move through a series of lines and curves to build a foundation for more complex designs.

Week 2: Meandering Designs  (Days 8-14)

Get comfortable filling up all that blank space by practicing meandering motifs, including the infamous stipple. Then see what else you can do with all-over stitching to create swirls, flowers and more.

Week 3: Between the Lines  (Days 15-21)

Leave behind your meandering motifs and focus on being a little more precise. From arcs and serpentine curves to hearts and more, this lesson is all about practicing motifs between a set of lines. They’re perfect for borders and sashing.

Week 4: Feature Motifs  (Days 22-28)

Feature motifs are meant to be showstoppers — we’re talking feathers and flowers. Get tips for combining these gorgeous motifs with other designs from previous lessons. Then go forth and quilt all the quilts!

In case you’re wondering, you’ll find 2 lessons by me during the 4th week…I’ll let you guess what those lessons might be about!  You can find this series of lessons by clicking here, and feel free to browse through all the other great Blueprint classes while you’re there!

A Quilt for One of my Brothers

January 8th, 2020

 

My brother’s favorite color is black, and I literally pieced 3 different tops that featured black but this is the only one I like.  I LOVE how black makes other colors more dramatic, but I do not find it an easy color to use in large amounts.  I’m really happy with how this lap quilt turned out, though.  The center is a giant Dresden plate that I made using the template from Missouri Star:

Here’s a close up of how those blades/fans are quilted.  I had drawn a soap line down the center of each fan and just stitched an “Aztec feather” inside each one:

I used a 4 in circle template to create an arc that ran from each fan blade to the next, then went back in with the Westalee Corner marking oval template to add a channel.  The area around the ruler work is quilted using the rudimentary “Plumify It” quilt design:

The striped border has a long straight feather stitched across it on all 4 sides:

The outermost border is quilted with feathers that are curling intensely that spring from one another.  I really love that effect and it makes me feel so great to stitch those that I literally think I could do it all day long:

One last shot…sure hope he likes it!