Free motion quilting

So, latley I came across this bloggy : http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

And I was totally inspired to do some of this free motion stuff myself, it looked so pretty and Leah makes it look so easy in her instructional videos xD

I have now learnt that it is not as easy as she makes it look!

I promptly got some scraps of fabric together and had a go! My first attempts were so bad I am ashamed to show them. But here are a few that look not totally horrendous:

The stippling above was the most fun, though I think I did it a bit small, and it was quite intense trying to see where I was going

This one is a clover design, this is about my 5th attempt at it - but once I'd mastered the basic shapes it was nice to do :]

This one is my favorite just for the way it looks - it looks really pretty and wasn't hard either, this is actually my first attempt :D

I think I am definatly going to try and find a place on a quilt for this design, maybe one for my sister, I think she'd like it.

Below is a close-up:

Then i got carried away and made a coaster :] though I made one crucial mistake! I used the blue thread for stitching the binding >.<

So then I got all excited and bought some great fabric (bramble patch sale... I only bought one thing at sale price! oops!) hometown by moda - i bought some with writing on with different words for home, and some swirly antique looking writing. Really pretty.

And I set to work making some more coasters, this time as a present for my friends who are getting married on the 29th :]

It took me about 5 days to make them all but I'm pretty pleased with most of them, some of my corners leave a bit to be desired, but I'm hoping they wont notice or care! I did so many that i ran out of material (I bought 2 fat quaters), I chose the best 4 (most of them were horrible, it took a while to work out how wide the borders should be - as the one on the blue was just too thin) and wrapped them all up nicely and ready to go to them :]

Here they are:

 I had some pretty ribbon to wrap them all in :] (ignore my horrible table)

 Then i sewed a small button in the middle :] I think it looks really cute, I used metallic thread to do the stippling with

Thanks for reading :]

starrie x

Productive shopping trip :]

So the fabric shop was great! I got quite a few bargains :] and I picked up a book, for £3! brilliant! it had a design for a big dipper pinwheel quilt, I loved it so much at first sight that I had to buy the fabric for it there and then! I got some really, really great purple dotty material: 

It has a kind of velour-ey look and i love it :D

Then i got some plain white with Little tiny flowers on -  i tried to take a picture but it didn't really work, so I'll leave that one lol

For the back, I got a lighter purple material with smaller white dots :] 

Not sure the picture does it justice - it's really cute tho xD

So I started the pinwheels, and while simple in concept they were hard to line up and make sure that it will all line up. My first is the worst one, but I'm hoping I'm getting better as I go along xD

This is my first block and a sashing strip sewn onto it ->

I know it doesn't entirely match up in the centre but they got better, I swear, look:

:] it looks okay from far away, if i do say so myself xD

So that's that. More to come soon :]

Oh and before I go - this is my cath kidson quilt, made with 7 fat quaters and simply stitched in the ditch, hope you can see it :]

Thanks for reading!

starrie