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!