There's nothing quite like FMQ. Sitting down with a fabric sandwich and your creativity can bring forth wonderful, flowing stitches or a wild mess of thread. Either way, you expand on your knowledge of what does and doesn't work for you in future projects.
My practice panel is almost full. I pull it out from time to time and stitch out things I've seen or things I think I might like. Sometimes my ideas are good ones but here's one that I didn't like too much.
Similar tones together. I thought the lavender thread would look great. After setting in some of the FMQ, I thought otherwise. It was very difficult to see where I was and where to go. Whether a spot was filled in enough or not. If I sewed over a boundary line. I decided to switch it out to the blue.
This was much easier to work with. I played around with the density, shape, and size of my pattern. It reminded me of a fried egg so as I stitched I thought, "yolk, white, bigger white" and then moved on to the next one.
Here is the back of the eggs. I had a bit too much bobbin tension on it.
Several months ago, I saw a post on Sew Cal Gal that shared this idea. I really liked it so I finally got to try it out. This would look great around a motif on the fabric, or surrounding an appliqué.
I wanted my twisted ribbon to have shiny thread so Sulky was the best choice for that effect. I drew out my lines with disappearing ink. Funny how I didn't follow them very well and made it smaller than I intended to. Then I stitched down the dark color and then the light color. I really like the way it looks.
So how is your journey with quilting and free motion quilting? Any practice is time well spent. You will get past the bumps and learning curves. You will eventually stop holding your breath as you press on the machine's pedal. One thing I find myself doing is biting down on my teeth or pursing my lips as I sew. If your tense, it will show up somewhere on you! Then I stop to remind myself that this is an enjoyable moment, relax my facial muscles, smile, and do more sewing. You have to practice showing the joy sometimes. After a while, that will happen naturally too!
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