Free Motion Machine Quilting Practice

To keep those free motion quilting skills fresh, I took three of the pieced blocks from the Craftsy Block of the Month class from several years ago and quilted them up. My go to place for motifs these days is Lori Kennedy's web site, The Inbox Jaunt.

The design on this block is the Squiggly Sun. This is the only block where I knew before I started what I wanted to do. The semi-circles of gray were perfect for this design. There isn't any quilting on the printed fabric at all but I'm thinking that some should be added later. My preference is for the quilting to be balanced over the entire block or quilt.

Here is a close up of the center motif. It was a fun design to quilt.

It took some time to figure out what to quilt on this block. I had drawn some ideas but none of them were quite right. While browsing the motifs over at The Inbox Jaunt, this sewing scissor motif fit the space perfectly. It is a design I had been wanting to try anyway, so that made it an easy decision.

There was some space left in the center of the block after the scissors were quilted. I attempted to quilt a needle and thread to go with each pair of scissors to fill the space. The printed fabric is stitched in the ditch along some of the seam lines.

This block ended up being my favorite, probably because I was able to use so many different motifs in one block. The Welsh Leaf is across the top, Clam Shells on the left side, Lines with Spirals across the bottom, and alternating vertical and horizontal lines on the right side. The inner square is quilted with The Twist.

Here is a closer look at the Welsh Leaf. This was the most difficult of the designs.

Here's the straight line with a spiral. I need to practice this one more. It was hard to figure out where to start the spiral so that it was centered on the line. I think it would look better if the spirals happened more frequently, too.

The alternating vertical and horizontal lines were fun. The rhythm and flow of this design made it easy to do.

This design is called Clam Shell but they look more like rainbows here. You can see the twist design in the inner square here, too. It was another design with easy flow.

I'm not sure what is going to happen with all these quilted squares. There are quite a few to go. For now, they are a good size for quilting practice and that makes them one step closer to becoming a finished project.

Everything gets better with practice.

Linking up to Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.