January Free-Motion Quilting Challenge - Done in the Nick of Time

At the beginning of the year I joined SewCalGal's Free-Motion Quilting Challenge.  Each month a different tutorial on free motion quilting is going to be posted on her site and the goal is to complete the project by the end of the month.  Please note that today is the last day of the month and I just finished mine.

Not happy to just take two pieces of fabric and some batting to practice on, I decided that I could kill two birds with one stone and make a mini quilt to be donated to the Cobblestone Quilt Guild's Silent Auction that will be held at our show in March.  And then to make it really interesting I decided that I would use the painting technique from a DVD I had recently acquired (Dynamic Quilt Design by Susan Brubaker Knapp) and use up some of my scrap fabric for a border (I have a hard time throwing fabric away and have numerous plastic shoe boxes - sorted by color - full of small scraps of fabric.)

So I started with a drawing I made of a violet type flower and then started painting:

I then added a border of purple fabric:

And then at long last I was able to do the free-motion challenge of a heart shaped leaf.

I struggled a little bit with the tension going between the painted fabric and the border - I should have used a smaller needle - a learning experience.



And finished in the nick of time.