Double wedding ring mat finished!

Presenting my first finish for the First Quarter FAL 2013:

I started this project on May 2nd, 2012. Listed it in several FAL posts, but somehow it always got overlooked. Do you remember what it looked like?

It's a little wobbly because I used my less quality fabrics and I believe the white was a sheet from my friend. I knew I will not make a whole quilt out of it, just wanted to try what it looked like if I strip pieced the fabrics and used the large curved templates as opposed to cut out the individual patches one-by-one. It doesn't look bad, but will try the patches anyway.

As some of you know I signed up for Leah Day's class Free Motion quilting a sampler on Craftsy with the intention of getting an idea of how to quilt my  blue and white baby quilts. She  had these  3  patterns I liked and wanted to practice so that's what I decided to use.

So here are the finished pictures after washing:

Close-up paisley ring:

Close-up paisley stitching:

Close-up  ring crossing pattern:

Close-up smaller paisley:

Close-up swirls:

That's all for now, I'm in the process of deciding what pattern to use on the blue-white baby quilts. Stay tuned! :)

'Til we blog again! :)

Christmas QAYG progress

Hello, and Welcome back!

I have a few pictures to share with you guys. Friday night and Saturday afternoon I had time to  sit down and start the Free Motion Quilting I wanted to do on some of the Christmas blocks. I even got out my walking foot and put it to use in a real quilt for the first time. If you're following my blog you read my post about my problems with the walking foot. Thankfully I don't have that problem anymore! It included to order a brand new walking foot through Amazon.com.  When that arrived I could compare it to my original Singer walking foot and noticed that the plate itself that pushes the fabric down was missing from mine. No wonder why I couldn't get the stitches working. DUH! So now I have and extra walking foot :)

I got all excited and decided to quilt one of my blocks on my Christmas Quilt with straight lines. I can't remember if I mentioned it at the FAL blog post, but this quilt is partially made with block swap blocks from back in 2007. It mostly includes my blocks, but there were a few that were close to the size I needed (and we agreed on) so I decided to use those. Someone made a very pretty star block in which the fabrics I love and left the background just blank white which called for the straight line quilting I longed for. I think it looks really pretty now! I had to put a frame around the blocks to be able to size them up to be uniform.

Let me just say it while I was working on this block I was in loooooove! With my walking foot of course! Now I can't wait to make a quilt with just straight line quilting.

The next block I pieced myself because I love pine trees. A lot! :)

On this block I was going to practice the swirls I really like from Angela Walters' Craftsy class. Well, I still need a LOT of practice for sure! It's a lot more easier to just draw it on paper.

Close-up of the background quilting:

And the final one that was also pieced by  me:

With this block I was practicing pebbles for the first time. Not-so-perfect, but I can live with it :) It's kind of stiff right now, but I'm hoping it will get softer once the quilt is together and I can wash the whole thing. I love this look because it reminds me of snow falling. If you know me well, you know how much I LOVE snow! :)

Here's a close-up of the pebble quilting:

That's all I have for today, I'm hoping my Amy  Butler Weekender bag pattern will arrive shortly so I could start that project too! Like I need more projects to work on, LOL!

'Til we blog again! :)