Quilting as you go...and practicing

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all in the States are enjoying some cool Fall weather. I know I am :) And there is fresh snow on the mtn top! That always makes me happy.

I have four of these blocks. They are 15" square. A little design I made up for a quilt design contest a few years ago. As they've just been sitting and doing nothing, I thought I would do a quilt as I go method. While I practiced my FMQing.

 

 I was having a little trouble at first.... till I realized I hadn't put my stitch length to zero. lol Here's some pebbling, I got confused which way to go occasionally.

 I just did some simple lines in these blocks... but it's hard to keep the line curved right.

 My regular readers know how much I love flowers. They are getting a little easier.

I'm still having fun! It sure is going to take a lot of practice! I best see what other ufo's I have laying around, small ones, that I can practice on. I know there is a lot of them somewhere. LOL

Linking up with:

Quilt story
I have to say
Free motion by the river

Christmas in July blog hop!

Hello Everyone,

And welcome to my stop on the blog hop. A big thank you going out to Samm and Carol, for their great ideas, blog hops and cheering.

I love Christmas :) The snow, the Christmas carol's, the cookies, the joy on little kid faces...And there is some darling Christmas fabric out there too. But, for some reason, I just don't decorate for Christmas with FABRIC stuff!? So I had very little Christmas fabric in my stash.

 I dug out these fabrics that my quilting forum swapped a few years ago.

I made 3 stars and some strips of squares. And put together a quilt as you go (QAYG) table runner.

Here is how I did it.

First lay your backing right side down, and smooth your batting on top. Find the middle of your batting and mark it.  Put your middle block right on that mark. Centering it.

Lay your second piece right sides together with the first, and sew your 1/4" seam. You'll sew right thru the batting and backing, so that your blocks will not only be sewn together, but to the batting/backing as well.

Open up that second piece, smooth it out (or even iron it if you want) and lay your third piece, right side down, on top of the second piece. Sew, press open, repeat.

When you are done going one way, do the same thing going the other way. Until your blocks all all sewn down.

Then sew your bottom and top sashings and blocks the same way.

When you have all your blocks/sashings sewn on, you can trim and bind it. It's already quilted :) Or you can do some more quilting on the blocks.

I did some FMQing, I have to practice, a LOT! Still having some tension issues. I go to fast with the machine, then have to slow down, and slow down too much, then speed up again... And when I finally get the speed of the machine right, I have to figure out how fast to move the fabric thru with my hands. Sigh~

 I practiced doing some simple back and forth loopy things, and circles in all the little squares. Plus a little tree.

Made a star in each of the big blocks, and TRIED to sew straight lines along the seams. Dang that's hard!! lol

Then I trimmed and put my binding on.

(Forgive the poor photos. Our sky is filled with smoke from a fire up in Oregon!)

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you are getting some Christmas sewing done :)

Don't forget to check out the other lovely projects. Here's today's schedule.

August 2

Quilt Doodle Doodles

life, quilts and a cat too

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Ridge Top Quilts

Editha

Stitchin By the Lake

Quilts, Fabric and Thread Tales

Sew Many Yarns

Kwilty Pleasures

Kris Loves Fabric

52 Quilts in 52 Weeks

Robin’s Fabric Nest

 

July goal...FINISHED!

Good morning All,

It's a gorgeous morning out, the weather has cooled off, it was almost chilly over night :)

I got my July goal finished, just in time. Put the binding on yesterday.

But I can only show you a little bit of it. Until Aug 2nd. My July goal was to get my Christmas in July blog hop project complete. I blogged about it here. Decided to use some swap fabric I had, instead of buy some new Christmas fabric.

I hope you come back on the 2nd to see the rest the table runner. It's a quilt as you go (QAYG) design, and I show you the steps to take to do some QAYG yourself.

Have a great day!



 

Quilt as you go....quilt

 I have a new tutorial up at the Q&N. It's on making a larger than table runner, quilt as you go project.

 

I made just a small top. Just to do the tutorial. Nice and Springlike though, yes?

 Linking up with H&M today. Thanks so much Heather and Megan, I love this link party!

For those of you looking forward to seeing what I did with these....

Come back on Thursday, and I will reveal all! LOL

Another sneakpeek at it....

Thanks for stopping by, Dorian

Quilt-as-you-go table runner and some Spring pictures

Linking up with Karen.

Linking up with Quiltstory.

I whipped up this cute table runner yesterday. It's made from the charm pack of Fandago that I won.

It's quick and easy...

 I made a quick tutorial for it on the Q&N.


 Looks like Spring is finally arriving. Slowly but surely. Here is a few pics for you.

The RedBud still looks funny. As it's just a bunch of sticks with some buds attached right now.

It wont leaf out very much, until the blooms are starting to die.

Here is the first Lilac blooms.

Very similar to the RedBud...but it has it's leaves first.

And a pretty little wildflower, not sure what it is.

 

Hope you all are getting a little bit of sunshine and warm weather.

Thanks for stopping by, Dorian