It feels so right!!!

Well I did not mean to ignore the blog for so long. One thing led to another thing and before I knew it; it is the end of January. Earlier this month I joined the FMQ challenge over at  SewCalGal blog. It feels so right to be FMQ again. I wish that was the only thing that I needed to do during the day, quilting for about 8-10 hours a day, and be in total bliss. But that doesn’t put food on the table or buy the wonderful thread for the quilting. Each month there is a different teacher that has offered to demo or explain a design or technique. Several hundred quilters from allover the world are participating in the challenge. At the end of the month if you submit either a practice piece  or project to a link on SewCalGal blog. You have a chance to win a prize. Even if I don’t win anything, I still have won for myself in making time to FMQ, and  practicing techniques that I may not have done. Plus see so many wonderful blogs and pictures from other quilters. I have already gotten some new inspirations and its just the first month. The January teacher is Frances Moore at frantastic-stitchwitchery, the technique is a leaf design that can be used for an allover quilting.
I one technique that I least like is the allover designs. Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with allover designs, they have there place and purpose. Why do fancy feathers or heirloom designs if your not going to be able to see them. The reason I don’t do them is that I have problems staying consistent in size and want to make things to small for the overall quilt. Making it turn out to stiff or unbalanced. I have a couple of tops that I need to do an allover quilting, but have put it off, due to not being very good at being consistent and fear of messing them up. I would prefer to do heirloom feathers and pebbling than large flowing easy leafs. So that said I am glad that the first month was an allover design, out of the box and foot forward. I practiced on paper for a few days and then  put a piece of what ever fabric that I had in my stash together and started the design.

I also had some 12” blocks that I had cut up to do a quilt as you go quilt, I thought would be great to use this design. Not to large and not to small. It will be either a quilt for one of my granddaughters or a charity quilt. One side is butterflies and the other side I am using 7 different colors for each of the different blocks.


Here is a close up of the butterflies, so you can see the leaf/heart shape.

I have a couple of things that I want to play with during this challenge. 2012 FMQ may be the exact thing to get some projects finished. Thank you SewCalGal for a doing this wonderful challenge.
Cheryl M.