Shut Up and Quilt!

The Free Motion Quilt Project: Let's Start a New Project 

Out of order, but when I read Leah Day's post today I realized that I needed to go back to her January 1st entry - and what a wonderful surprise that was!

She is changing up her blog and now will be having a Wednesday Quilt A Long - with follow up questions answered on Thursday.  We can use what ever we have handy to do the practice...

Seems she was reading my mind.  In her entry she mentions being bored on her end with doing designs in isolation on little 4 inch squares and how she wants to work on sizing the stitching up to what most people use in their quilts...

I've been doing her beginning patterns as part of my Wonky Shoo Fly quilt - instead of the 4 inch squares I wanted to end up with something useable  It's been working fine - but even though I'm not finished I've been feeling like it's not quite enough.  I'm not bored but it wasn't feeling 'real' to me.

So when Sara described how she did QAYG for adding borders I decided to baste what I had done for the Liberated Round Robin and to change things up and to divide the result into sections.  I challenged myself to not quilt in the places with piecing - it was very successful for first try.  (Next time I want to work on adding more stuffing or something to the pieced areas so they stand out more.)

I listened to the first entry for the SewCalGal FMQ Challenge (one expert a month sharing a video with tips) and found the first one to easy to follow but I bet very hard for the beginners to figure out how to do.  Still it won't take a lot of time for me to do one sample per month listening to a different teacher....

I sort of feel like I've been on the FMQ bandwagon ahead of others - ever since I started practicing I've been thinking how I like the actual quilting as my favorite part of the process.  Not the planning, the design or picking out of fabrics, colors or patterns.  Not the cutting and piecing or ironing.  I like what happens after the basting -> getting to actually start quilting!

There is something to be learned from everything so I'm going to be going back and forth between different projects so I don't get entirely rusting on one part of the process.... but this year I will be working to finish projects - not just work on them.

Leah ended her video post with the pitch that she was going to Shut Up and Quilt (she used to say Let's Go Quilt) but has changed it as she wants to develop the resources and foundation for our quilting - but really wants us to quilt a little everyday so we improve at our craft/ hobby.