Friday was about tidying and cleaning the house, having lunch with Eloise and chat but as you all know Friday is supposed to be about Free Motion Quilting....well I plead that I did this week's pattern last week! What not good enough? You are right so here is another attempt to get my squares square and not like rooftiles...
The first effort
The second effort...
Look at my nice neat regular boxes! Are you impressed?? This is the back of my FMQ.
I worked from the bottom up - first the pattern as suggested then about 7 rows up I didn't make a complete box but went along, up, along and down in several rows so they made box shapes when the rows went together - that was much quicker! A bit like this...
What is my secret to such a regular pattern - this was the material on the front....
In rows 5 and 6 I did turn the white to the front and because I had practiced the movement with the checks it was more regular than my previous efforts! Is this cheating? Sort of! Or perhaps it is just using my fabric stash to my advantage...give it a go and see it it helps!
I then went on to make a few Ohio stars...
If we do bubbles or circles in the future I will definitely be looking for dotty fabric to practice on!
Now you know my secret but there is apparently something called 'muscle memory' - I heard about it from the piano teacher my daughter has - you can programme your hands and brain to do movements that are repeated often maybe we can tap into this with our FMQ..?
If you want to know more here is a bit about it on wikipedia. Once you learn how to form your letters for instance and you write you do not need to think about how to write the letter A - so if we can do the same with our machines and patterns we should be able to let our hands take over and relax a bit more....at least that is the theory.
Hope you had fun with your FMQ and linking up with the delightful Cindy again!
Like the theory - if only it worked in practise!! Your fmq is definitely looking great! Keep going! Jxo
ReplyDeleteIt's hard isn't it.
ReplyDeleteI can only stipple.
But practicing on the check fabric is a good idea.
Oh,yes, that's so good! Hope you have a wonderful day of autumn!!!
ReplyDeleteKristin xo
That made me laugh - you and your checks. Love it!
ReplyDeleteI have heard that said about the muscle memory thing. If you draw your proposed quilt design out several times then you should be able to draw it with your machine. At least in theory - I guess it is practise. I can see an improvement in your stitching.
ReplyDeleteyou monkey! What a great idea using a gridded fabric :) I love it. I did the same half squares, then reversed the half squares to get full squares. I thought I was cheating :) Clever lady you are because it totally worked! Looks great.
ReplyDeletehahahahahaha!! brilliant and it looks really good :) We'd have to use gingham on all our quilts!!
ReplyDeleteswot :)
ReplyDelete