WIP Wednesday - the quilting one!

When Angela Walters would say, “Quilting is the funnest part!”, that would grate on my ears. No offence to Angela, I’ve signed up for 2 of her Craftsy classes and learned a lot – she is a great teacher. But that phrase would always get inside my head and my inner voice would say nope its not!

It’s not because funnest doesn’t sound quite right and most fun pops into my head every time I’d hear that phrase, I think its because when you are learning free motion quilting, its kind of tricky, a little bit difficult! Not so much fun.

Concentrating hard,  stitching out of the ditch instead of in, messing with tension, learning to co-ordinate hand movement to foot speed and ripping out quilting (I wonder why I bury threads when its so hard to rip out teeny tiny quilting stitches!) -  takes a bit of practice, a small dollop of hope, a large dollop of fearlessness and a ‘what’s the worse that could happen?’ attitude. It’s definitely not fun at the beginning, at least not for me.

This week though I think I might just be getting at the spirit of what Angela means!

I’ve seen the question asked are you a quilter or a piecer and I would instinctively be on the piecing side, though I do prefer when possible to quilt my own projects. I have 2 quilt tops sitting, waiting for me to get brave enough to take the plunge and quite a few that needs finishing.

This week intending to finish the binding on my Swoon quilt for my cousins wedding, I found myself wanting to quilt not piece, for the first time ever!

Maybe its the Dog Gone Cute cushion I’ve been making using Lorna's pattern or the quilt writing I attempted in last weeks tote bag or maybe its just my new Janome or the fact that I hate binding but my hands have wanted to quilt all week and here’s the thing, it was fun!

I really enjoyed the whole process this time around and didn’t feel the pressure to not mess up my piece like I usually do! I still did some practice sketches and 1 practice piece to get the dog paws in my head and then just went for it!

Normally when drawing I try not to allow words in my head and just think about moving a little bit this way, a bit more that way but when quilting the dog paws I found it really useful to talk to myself and say wiggle a little bit, mushroom, button, button, button, button and wiggle a bit again. For some reason this helped me keep the shape in my head. Anyone else do that - talk to yourself while quilting?

Some are quite good, some not so good but all are ok and no ripping required! Apart from the quilt writing.  I think I did ok with Patch and Charly but the T in Toby looks more like Yoby! For some reason that makes me smile!  We used to call him Tobes, Tubsy, Tobster - I should probably change the Y but I am tempted to leave it!

The Dog Gone Cute Quilt-A-Long has started and Lorna has the instructions up on her blog for making dog number 1 & 2.  It will be my turn on the blog hop where I get to show you my finished  cushion of our Jack Russell Terriers and I hope to make the 60" x 60" quilt for myself! Fingers crossed I'll get that done in time!

If you want to see more the hop participants are here and posting progress over the month of September following the QAL:

Tuesday, October 6
Karen of Run Sew Fun
Kris of Kris Loves Fabric
Anja of Anja Quilts
Kelly of Quilting it Out
Tish of Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland

Thursday, October 8
Carol of Just Let Me Quilt
Nina of Inchworming
Doris of The Quilting Queen Online
Brandy of Pampered Pettit
Leena of Creative Instincts

Tuesday, October 13
Ruth of Charly and Ben’s Crafty Corner
Tanya of Tanya Quilts in Colorado
Laurel of Quilts by Laurel
Kathy of Kathy’s Quilting Blog
Deb of New Creative State

Thursday, October 15
Anita of Daydreams of Quilts
Gina of Quilts and Cakes
Beth of Words & Stitches
Rachel of Quiltineering
Julie of Mack and Mable

Tuesday, October 20
Cathy of A Quilting Chick
Selina of Selina Quilts
Shauna of Shauna’s World
Gayle of Pedal Sew Lightly
Kathy of Kayak Quilting

Thursday, October 22
Sandy of Upstairs Hobby Room
Heide of Heide’s Quilty Hugs
Britt-Inger of Hill Valley Quilter
Judy of How ART You?
Louisa of Sewmotion

Tuesday, October 27
Teje of Nero’s Patch and Post
Stephanie of Jak and Will
Valerie of Val’s Quilting Studio
Ellen of Georgia Florida Studio
Cristina of Pretty Little Quilts

Thursday, October 29
Abigail of Cut & Alter
Magdalena of iloveneutrals
Jenn of A Quarter Inch from the Edge
Anne of Batiks by the Bay
Susie of Susie's Sunroom
Tracy of Tracy’s Bits N Pieces