Quilting in Negative Space Practice - Circles

A dear friend recently gifted me with the Craftsy class of my choice. One of my goals for the new year is to improve both my confidence and my skill with machine quilting, so I signed up for Quilting in Negative Spaces with Angela Walters. There are ten lessons, and I've watched five of them so far. The first thing she teaches is how to use a circle, or pebble pattern, in quilting.

The first Craftsy class I took was the Block of the Month class. I finished all the blocks, but decided that I didn't want to put them all together in a big quilt. Those blocks are going to be finished individually, then hung as a group. They are perfect for practicing quilting. Here's the first one:

I had a great time quilting this, and it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected. What I like most is that it is not precision quilting. As long as the overall look is achieved, noone is going to notice the little mistakes made throughout.

One thing I will need to work on is the scale of my designs. I have to fight the urge to go teeny tiny with my pebbles.

So, I'm not very patient when it comes to practicing on true practice fabric, so I jumped right in and quilted one of my unfinished tops.

I was amazed at how much the piece changed with the quilting. This is going to totally change the way I look at a project. Before now, the quilting was a burden, and something that just had to be done to finish the project. Serious, planned quilting seems to elevate the project to a whole new level.

The squiggly lines on either side of the circles almost look like ruching. It's very feminine looking.

Here's the piece as a whole. I couldn't even wait until the binding was on to take these photos.

Makes me want to tackle a few more of those unfinished quilt tops.

Here it is from the back.

And here it is finished, hanging just inside my front door.

This is just the first quilting design. Next, I'm taking up swirls.