Taking the FMQ challenge from Laura Lochore at Quokka Quilts

Laura started some FMQ posts a few weeks ago featuring one of her favorite FMQ artists, Judi Madsen from Green Fairy Quilts and she challenged us to post some of our favorites that we like to imitate. While I really admire Judi and do try to imitate her designs in my quilts, I have recently been inspired by Lori Kennedy at the Inbox Jaunt. You can find the link to her site on the right side bar. I have been watching her site for a while and doodling some of her designs a little, but for some reason, the design below challenged me to quilt it.

I made a quilt sandwich with a top solid fabric 10" square and the backing and batting was 12" square.

 

I believe that Lori's sample was much larger.

My square doesn't match the quality of Lori's finished piece, but I am still proud of it. I will not throw it away and I will definitely include it in a sampler quilt in the future.

My point of sharing my work is to encourage everyone to try free motion quilting. It's a little intimidating, but it really isn't hard. The biggest part of learning this technique is to just try it and practice, practice, practice!

I am also showing some of my doodles. Lori really encourages doodling. I actually think that I quilt better than I doodle, but it seems to train the brain to learn to look ahead so I can learn how to navigate my quilting so it can be continuous.

 

These are some more doodles that I have tried from Lori's blog (the link is on the right side of this page.)

Those little cars were fun. I haven't tried to quilt them yet though.

 

 

I would like to thank Laura Lochore from Quokka Quilts for encouraging me to join her in her QAL. 

I didn't join her on her last FMQAL because I just wasn't prepared. This time I have prepared several quilt sandwiches so I can be ready to try out Larua's and Lori's challenges.

I would also like to thank Lori Kennedy for her designs and detailed tutorials. I think her tutorials are what made me think I could actually do them!

There are a lot of other extremely talented FMQ artists and designers out there. Be sure to look them up if you don't know about their work: Angela Walters, Leah Day, Christina Camelli, and Patsy Thompson. I have also learned a lot from Craftsy online classes at craftsy.com.

One of the most valuable lessons to be learned is:

 PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, 

DOODLE, DOODLE, DOODLE,

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

I hope you are encouraged to try your hand at FMQ!

 

RSC15 Green - Ready or not, here I come!

 

It wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought. I think I can handle this, especially if I split them into light and dark. It was fun looking at these fabrics. It has been a while since I have touched them!

Please be sure to click on the RSC15 link to the right of this page to learn more about this project!

Purple? Where is my purple fabric?

Purple...............................I can't believe that I actually had to buy some purple fabric in order to continue making the rainbow projects that I have started.

I had very little purple and lavender fabrics!!!!!

 

Purple Sawtooth Stars

 

 

 

Scrappy Rainbow Heart

Bottled Rainbow Block
I am finally getting caught up on these blocks.

Purple Fabric Scrap Basket

Scrappy Rainbow Mountain Majesties is Growing

Scrappy Rainbow Rows are growing!

This is all the purple I had left.
Not much compared to the blues, pinks, and yellows.
I guess I need to keep an eye out for purples in the future.
I need to balance my stash. Right?

 

RSC15 Progress with yellow!

  

Yellow Sawtooth Stars with crumb centers.

 

 

Scrappy Rainbow Heart

 

 

One more row added to my Scrappy Rainbow Mountain Majesties.

 

 

 

Rainbow crumb rows

 

This is all the precuts I have left from my yellow fabric scraps.

 

Only a few crumbs left.

RSC15 Putting the pinks behind me and moving on to the yellows

The last of the pinks!
I managed to make a fabric box (pattern from Sunday Morning Quilts) and several 10" squares and 8-1/2" squares of fabric and I still have a stack of pink crumbs waiting for me for another time.

RSC15 Pinks - Nothing left but the crumbs!

All of the scraps have been reduced to precuts.

 

And now there is nothing left but the crumbs!

I plan to sew them into slabs of fabric for other projects.

Scrappy Rainbow Mountain Majesties
Now I have a blue row and a pink row. I am not yet sure what order I will sew these together.
 I think I will wait until the end of the year and audition my layouts.
 

RSC15 Progress in Pinks



From this.............................

to this!


 

 

  
I managed to cut up most of the pink fabric in the under bed storage container. I got several FQs, 2-1/2", 5", 8-1/2" and 10" squares plus some 2-1/2" strips. You can see in the background that I have also managed to sew up some of the crumbs into fabric slabs.

Here is a pink scrappy heart to go with my blue scrappy heart from last month.

 

I also made these two sawtooth star blocks.



RSC15 - Pinks!

This is a picture of my sorted pinks that have been in an under bed storage container for several years now. Even though they are sorted, I rarely open this container. I can't wait to get these all cut up and sewn up! I guess I should also say that it wasn't under my bed. I already had other storage containers under there. This container was stacked 5 high with fabric scraps of other colors which is another reason I haven't used these. This container was third down the stack!

RSC15 - Moving on from the blues!

 

I spent one more weekend working on the blues before I move on. I was able to finally make a fabric scrap box from the Sunday Morning quilt book. The box makes up larger than I thought it would but it isn't big enough for all of my blue leftover scraps and crumbs. I hope to get back to them later this year.

 

I am hoping to make a Rainbow Scrappy Mountain Majesty (Bonnie Hunter's Pattern). I now have one row of blues and plan to make a row each month. We'll see how that goes!

 

Well..................it's time to put away the blues and move on to the pinks!

A Quilter's Garden - Quilt Shop

This is my swap block. I did not do as well as I would have liked on the applique windows. I will probably redo them.

RSC15 Moving forward with the blues

As soon as the RSC15 January color of the month was announced, I pulled out my three plastic drawers full of blue fabric sorted in Ziploc baggies. This fabric is anywhere from 15-30 years old and they were all less than a FQ except for one. I used to have them sorted just by color, then I found I had trouble finding a few pieces of the same fabrics, so I sorted them by like fabrics and put them in baggies at least 10 years ago. I rarely used them.

Then I sorted them by value. Light, medium and dark. I found out that I also had a good bit of turquoise that isn't in this picture. I set the light and dark aside and started on the medium blues. After I made my two sawtooth stars, I started cutting my fabrics into precuts.

I emptied about 45 baggies of blue fabric and cut it up and the result was a good stack of 10" squares, 5" squares, 8-1/2" squares, 2 FQ, some 2-1/2" strips and a bunch of 2-1/2" squares.  Now I will be able to use them.

Now I am left with this pile of strips and snippets to make new blue fabric!

 

Since I had plenty of 2-1/2" squares, I decided to make rainbow scrappy hearts. I don't remember where I got the pattern. I plan to continue this with each color announcement throughout the year.

 

This was also a good opportunity to work on my bottled rainbow quilt that I started a couple of years ago.  http://www.stitchedincolor.com/2011/02/bottled-rainbows-ticker-tape-quilt.html  This is the link for the bottled rainbows if you are not familiar with it. You can also search for images of bottled rainbow quilts. I just love looking at them!

RSC15 January Sawtooth Stars

I decided to use the no-waste flying geese method. I thought and studied it and still cut the wrong fabrics for the geese. I should have cut a black 7-1/4" square and four 3-7/8" print squares for the star points. What a difference color makes!



 

Instead of making a 6-1/2" designer block for the center squares, I have decided to sew up my blue scraps to make a 6-1/2" square.

 

I am really looking forward to this year's scrappy challenge. I hope to get a lot of my fabric sewn up!

RSC15 Color Blue

Well......................this is supposed to be my sawtooth star block for the RSC15. I was pretty proud of my made up fabric center square. I thought so hard about the fabric for the star part. I used the no-waste flying geese method and I use my fabrics in the wrong place, so the star is invisible. I guess there is a name for this block. I will probably make another one as soon as possible. I will get it right this time!