I have always been intimidated by free motion quilting, until now.

My first attempts were awful: jumpy, inconsistent stitches, tension problems, stitches where I didn’t want them, etc. I was determined to improve this year.

I have been working on six baby quilts for the local guild to donate to NICU babies. Pictures as soon as I finish the binding. I’ve free-motioned them, in a large meander, as they don’t like a lot of stitching on them. I can definitely see improvements in these six quilts.

I have Patsy Thompson’s fabulous DVDs, and replayed Volume 0.5 again the other day too. This time I paid very close attention to the placement of her hands, stitch length and how she was moving the fabric. It helped a lot.

This weekend, despite my “don’t start anything new” rule, I cut up six gorgeous fat quarter batiks to make six Friendship Bags. If you decide to do this too, be warned, I had JUST enough fabric with the FQs. Only one little 2″ x 8.5″ strip and a few scraps left over.

I first cut out the lining pieces (15″x8.5″) and the two handles, 10″ x 2 1/4″. I cut the rest of the fabric into various strips ranging from 1″ to 3″ x 8.5″. In hindsight, I should have made them 9″ to give me more room to trim after, but then I probably wouldn’t have had enough fabric to get the length required. These measurements are coming from Rachel’s Friendship Bag Tutorial.

I stripped the pieces horizontally to make one long piece ~15″x8.5″, then spray-basted on batting. Then it was time to play with the quilting. I’m using a gorgeous variegated thread (Coats, I believe) with Bottom Line in the bobbin.

I’ve finished the free motion quilting on one piece already. Is it perfect? No! But I love it, and it was so much fun! I opted to quilt each strip in a different pattern. I wanted to try circles, bubbles actually, but my samples looked awful. I think I’ll hold off on those until I get more experience and confidence.

The back. Because the Friendship Bags will be lined, the quilting is done without a back fabric, just the batting.

A bit of site news

I did some cleaning up around here, and renamed the old Quilter’s Resources section to Quilter’s Fun. You’ll still find the resources there, but I’ve also added the swaps and contests too.

There are 121 participants from 17 different countries so far for the Friendship Bag Swap. You can join, view the participants check out the Flickr group and get Rachel’s fabulous tutorial.

Also, check out the Quilting Gallery, featured on Indie North today. Thanks Beth!