My Personal FMQ Challenge

The best way over a fear in sewing is just to jump in, I've spent the months eyeballing a new technique in outright fear, panic, and awe. Considering it, looking at others work, deciding mine is never, ever going to match up regardless of practice, and shuffling away to leave it for a few more months before beginning the eyeballing over again. But each time once I've jumped I've loved it, I've made mistakes, I've cursed, and ripped seams, but I've felt invigorated and alive, and like I could conquer anything just because I tried.

Free motion quilting is probably my longest running sewing longing/fear. So I've challenged myself this year to do weekly practice, and to just free motion quilt some stuff. The weekly practice is going to add up to a QAYG quilt, another technique that's long had me baffled, and again the only to really understand it is to go through it. So I bought a layer cake of Botanics and of Silent Film by Kona, and each week I will quilt a 10" square with whatever design I fancy.

I first tried to start this challenge last September, but I only got one square in before it fell by the wayside overtaken by things I felt I should be doing, wasn't doing, and therefore became even more urgent to get done. I'm not sure this is the best way to improve. It's possible that taking one design and practicing it over and over would make me really great at that one design, but I'm hoping that this will teach me to loosen up and get into the sort of flow of the quilting.

FMQ seems to require a sweet spot between not thinking too much and not thinking too little, kind of like playing music. Also, the instant you think, 'hey, I'm doing great right now' is the instant you lose it and it all goes to shit. For some unaccountable reason my cheap, basic machine has taken to FMQ like a duck to water with minimal to no tension issues (I am touching wood as I type this).

The biggest problem is that I have no way to regulate my stitches apart from, you know, me! Some days I do great, some days I do terrible, I'm heavy footed and slow handed and there's billions of tiny stitches. I've also discovered there's no point in me marking the design because the foot will block at least half of it and I'll mess up while peering to see where I'm supposed to go next. My concentration is poor, which means the design often starts great but ends up getting woollier and woollier.

It is lovely though, I get sort of lost in it and then the reward is the lovely texture at the end that you get to stroke. I think I'll probably revisit some of these designs again. I really like the spiral squares in the yellow and the echoing leaves (though they kind of look like flames, and that's what I was chanting while I stitched it). I'm going to stop now, because I'm starting to sound quite mad.

I'll be linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced!

December's techno/sewing effort

At the start of December I started a new block for the Farmer's Wife Quilt. I was still in Ireland and had found a handy tray to tote my hand-sewing paraphenalia around the house. Because it wasn't constantly getting scooped up and moved off the sofa (other people always want to sit where my sewing is - so annoying, damn those people), I suddenly thought I could take a picture every day and be able to see my progress.

Then I wanted to make the photos into a flickbook type video and I took to google to learn how. After struggling through various tutorials for Photoshop (all of which written from Macs for some reason, and I'm a PC girl), my wonderful husband decided to help and did it in 10 minutes in Microsoft Paint - who knew!??

Some disclaimers, this is my first gif, the compression of the pictures has caused some weird artefacts in places, and also Ireland in December means all sorts of funky lighting.

So here it is, if I can figure out how to make this upload and also run - fingers crossed! The block is  #43 Garden Path, has 44 pieces and finishes at 6".

1500 CT Ok, this isn't working right now, but I'll try and troubleshoot it over the next couple of hours as I can :)

1513 CT That didn't take long - woop!!

When I do this little experiment again I will definitely make sure I take the picture at the same time of day each day for constant light, and I'll also get a tripod for the camera so the distance from the block is the same. Still though I'm glad I did it, I love the block and it was fun to experiment with new things (to me).

Now I'll have to learn how to add some music.

We are now in Houston. We're largely unpacked though there are still piles of things in corners and the odd box hanging about. I got my sewing machine out at the start of this week and have begun a little bit of making. In fact, I'm seeing if I can last minute make my mini-quilt for the MQG Riley Blake Basics Challenge.

I might be mad (239 sqaures plus a paper pieced bottom not pictured), but it's nice to not be wrestling cardboard and packing tape each day!

Fingers crossed the mini is made by Sunday night - I'll pop it up here as soon as I finish :)

Have a Happy Valentine's Day - I hope there's some figure skating on tomorrow, so much glitter!!

Oh, and thank you for all the little bits of distraction and pretty I've gotten from your blogs over the last two months - totally sanity saving! x