And practice and practice and practice…
Free motion quilting (FMQ) is a crazy concept. There’s a FMQ’d baby quilt on one of our walls that has these intricate vines with heart-shaped leaves. Now, if you’re not familiar with FMQing, do this: hold a pencil still in one hand, and move a piece of paper under the motionless pencil, and make a border around the paper around little squares complete with heart-shaped leaves. Crazy, huh?
I have a nice pile of blocks leftover from the Chevron Baby Quilt and since I love the fabric so much, I thought I’d make a little wall panel out of the remainder and practice my FMQ skills, or lack thereof.
My Viking prinCESS came with FMQ functionality and an acrylic FMQ foot.
I’ve used it somewhat and I like it quite a bit. I have yet to break it anyway.
I did some practice and watched some tutorials online before I decided what I wanted to go for on the real deal. I really dig this Leah Day channel on YouTube. She’s really easy going, she’s doing it on a Janome (which I have mad love for as well) and she really gives you the confidence that you can just jump in and do it.
So…I just did it. I’m still doing it….
That’s my first section. It’s….creative. HAHAHA. I’m good with it though. This is on Warm and Natural batting…and it’s going well. I can feel the difference between it and the Nature-Fil bamboo/cotton blend, but it’s ok.
And here’s my second section – ignore that I was less picky about the pattern matching up. The FMQing is more uniform, but I got a bit of puckering down at the bottom right. Again, I’m okay with it. As I go along, I can feel what needs improvement, how things need to be approached a bit differently and where I can tweak it to make it better. Also, how I may pick a less geometric patterned fabric next time! I won’t have it done in time for Valentine’s Day, but I think it will be cute as a headboard sort of hanging over our bed. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, but so far, I’m diggin’ it.