From the picture, I started free hand drawing the design on a pattern paper and cut out a few bird shapes from scrap that I have. I've done some free motion quilting before, but it's been a long time, 5 years to be precise. Wow, that's a long time since my daughter's college quilt! I'm really out of shape on this one, but I thought I'd give it a try. I need practice, right?
I have some white linen fabric left over from my skirt, so I used that for the quilt top. I guess I'll find out how this linen fabric will look as a quilt top, I told myself while I cut it into 18 inch-square. With Wonder Under, I fussed the bird shapes on the top. I layered the back, batting and the top, pin basted them and I was ready to give it a try. Before I started on the real quilt, I took some muslin, scrap batting and practice the free motion for awhile. I was all over the place. Then I was ready to start on the mini quilt.
I sew around the edge of the bird bodies twice, 4 times on the tails. I sew 3 times on the wire, and 4 times on each letters. At first I didn't plan to do any quilting, so I squared up the quilt and sew binding on it. Here is the picture.
I didn't like the way it looked. The linen looks puffy even though I pin basted all three layers really well. I threw it in the washer, hoping that it will look different when it came out. It looked worse. Not only that it's still puffy, the linen top was all wrinkled. So I did some free motion quilting in the background area. The quilting is supposed to be loops all over. Here is the picture. Do you think it looks better, or worse?
Over all I had fun making this project, and I learned a few things from it.
1. Never use linen which is not intended for quilting.
2. Learn to use my new digital camera, or go take a class, so I'll take better picture.
3. Practice, practice and more practice free motion quilting.
Have a blessed week, everyone!
