I was recently at my friend's house, who has a good free motion quilting machine, and I did some practicing. After I practiced free motion meandering, I was a little disappointed in my work, since it is not easy to do. I had heard that it takes practice, and that is right! So I wouldn't show you that particular practice piece--it doesn't look very good! I decided to stick to straight line quilting, until I have more practice time finished.
Then, I decided to make a sandwich. No, not the kind you eat! A quilt sandwich. This is a small square of the materials that you are using in your current quilt project, approximate 12 inches by 12 inches, including a piece of the top, a piece of the batting and a piece of the backing. With this you can practice stitches with free motion, even different threads and thread combinations, and sizes of stitch lengths.
Since I wanted a look of water, I tried parallel wavy lines . . . .
and . . . overlapping wavy lines. I tried some different colors of thread, but it doesn't show very well in these photos.
My current quilt project has a scalloped edging, so I cut the sandwich with a scalloped edge and tried two different stitching patterns along the scallops. I had originally thought that I wanted wavy lines there too, but hubby suggested straight lines going out from the center. I didn't like his thought very much, until I tried it.
My thought:
His thought:
I think his idea makes the scallop's look like seashells . . . and I like it better! It doesn't look so good here, since there is no edging to define it. Anyway, I think that this sandwich practice has helped me decide how I want to quilt my large project. The only thing left to decide is how I am going to quilt the patchwork portion that I haven't shown here. Decisions, decisions! Oh . . and I decided on a name for the quilt . . .
Stay tuned for the progress on the "Antique Bubble" doily quilt.