Able to quilt again... Quilt Along

Three weeks ago the rotary blade attacked me and I lost a bit of my finger.  My left index finger has been wrapped up and mending.  Painkillers have helped with sleeping, and a new cutter (see older blog entry) helped me overcome the fear of cutting fabric.

Last night I cut out the material for the Free Motion Quilting Project for the New Building Blocks Quilt

BOM

Along.  It is suppose to be two colour, found some Batik with pink, purple, and grey.  The plain color is pink.  My thread is maroon, and will really stand out.

I've already been practising and I have found that if I move the tension to 4 and of course drop the feeder feet it works better.

Sample of first quilting - getting use to it.

Made the first 3 blocks. Before quilting the first block I made sure to practise.  I can do the straight lines, that's what I've been doing for most of my quilts, but I wanted to watch the tension when free styling.  That takes practise to have the same amount of space between the stitches.  Leah Day has movies to show you how to do the quilting.  She also answers questions on her blog.  Her blog is excellent.  What do you think of my work?


The first block is squares.  There are three of them.  I've only done two but as you can see form the sample piece above, doing a number of the same block is fine because it's the quilting on the block that changes what they look like.  There will be 42 squares in total.  I'm also learning "quilting as you go", a first for me.  Each block will be 9 - 10 inches to be cut down to 8 inches.

First try, I'm not happy with this, need to redo.

2nd try

Not bad - lines are somewhat straight.

I've got another one to do but I've lost the light to do my tracing.  I love the colour of this quilt and the green fabric is the backing.  I got over 6 meters for it.  Should be fine.

I'll continue on with this next week.  I'm just happy to start.  And I need to practise more.

Note:  from the booklet that you purchase there are some corrections but the instructions are excellent and easy to understand.

Finger update and new Challenge

Things are going better now with my little finger accident (my rotary blade attacking me).  A friend is re-wrapping my finger tomorrow and we're checking it out.  

I have started my quilting challenge (see the Building Block Quilt along button on the left side).  I'll be posting some of my blocks that I finished.  There are 42, and I've done only 2 but it's started, I have the material and I'm happy.  This is the first time I'm using a free-style quilting foot and I'm still getting use to it, but the material is all there, and I can already see an improvement.  You'll see it soon, in the next entry.  I am starting something new thought that I would like to share.  It's the 2014 NewFO Challenge and I'm happy with the concept.

Here's what the group will be doing:   Each month, at least one new quilt will be started up.  It can be anything I like from bags to potholders or mug rugs to king-sized bed quilts.  I don't have to complete any project  during the year, just start it.  All I need to do to participate is start something new during any given month.  On the last day of the month, write a blog post about my new project and link up to the linky party on the blog from Barbara from Cat Patch.  As the year progresses, I update my previous months' NewFO projects on my blog and link in the patch.  I can also put it on the FlickR Group  I joined here.  Sounds simple and I have the button below.  It's added to my BOMs now.  What's one more?!!!  ;)