FMQ - May

May's free motion quilting challenge was done by Leah Day who I have been following for quite a while and from whom I have learned so much.  Leah is a very self-assured young lady who has overcome challenges in her life that none of us would want to face.  She and her husband Josh, run a thriving and exciting business selling all things necessary for quilting and freely teaching many quilting techniques.  You will find a link to her website here.

She called her tutorial "Foundational Designs" and began with telling us about the essential equipment to use when doing free motion quilting.  The Supreme Slider and machiners' gloves, I feel, are absolutely necessary to produce excellent work - apart from a lot of practice of course!

The first of the two foundational designs she did was "Double Stippling".  This entailed sewing a wiggily line and then sewing another wiggily line crossing backwards and forwards over the first line.  This did not come easy to me as I always try to avoid crossing over lines when stippling.  But anyway, this is what we were to do, getting me out of my comfort zone!  The second foundational design was "Railroad Tracks."  Much the same as the first design, but the lines were squared off.  A video of  both of the foundational designs can be found here.

Here is my usual doodle page, quite simple really!

Then comes my practice sandwich....

 

 And finally my attempt.... oops I've photographed it upside down!!  Haha.  But you get what I was trying to do!  I used Seralon in the bobbin and Gutermann Sulky Cotton in my 80/12 needle.

 

This was not my favourite quilting design but it was great to learn something new anyway.  I feel that we have progressed 5 months down the line and look forward to something more challenging next month; I think it is pebbling!  Thank you Leah Day and SewCalGal for giving us the opportunity to add another design to our sample quilt.