2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge - March

This month's tutorial was given by quilt artist, Ann Fahl. Ann's tutorial was packed with information, but what stuck out to me the most was her advice to add motifs to meandering and stippling designs to make them more interesting. And, one of her tips is to start a quilting design notebook and practice doodling in it. To get us started, she shared a few designs with loops, hearts, stars, spirals and flowers.

I don't think I practiced drawing this month as much as last month's feathers. I've had a couple of other projects that I've been working on and getting the challenge done kept taking a back seat.

I practiced drawing all of the above designs, but chose to quilt the flowers and spirals. I like these meandering flowers. I think they'd be cute on a little girl's quilt or a spring quilt. Looking at the picture I can see where I need to vary the direction just a little bit.

I had done some spirals on a quilt not too long ago, but they were large spirals with a little space between them. I decided I'd try working on smaller, more tightly-packed spirals. Getting the spacing was pretty tricky.

I know I need to spend more time practicing. This challenge is giving me a lot more quilting confidence. Maybe that stack of tops will get quilted sooner than I think.