Oh My Star

I always love star blocks and when I saw Jera of Quilting in The Rain "Summer Mini Star" quilt I just went ahead and bought the pattern

one year ago...

and it's super easy to do

I've done it in a day...well if you count the hours that I am working on it ;-)

here is the detail of the FMQ, isn't that pretty??

Please don't mind if I can't stop being narcissistic here 

I've been trying FMQ in my HV Designer Topaz 20 which is I must admit it was rather bumpy journey. I read and watched a bunch of tutorials, fiddle with the settings, etc but it was not working as smooth as my  humble Usha Stitch Queen. 

and this one I did with Rayon thread in butter yellow color. It's so gorgeous in person. 

HV DT 20 in my opinion is good as embroidery machine or general sewing. But not for quilting. This is from my personal experiences. 

At the back, I decided to go with this yellow and green geometric print from my Etsy Fabric Shop. I wanted something bright.

And the binding is dark grey polkadots. 

For now, it's hanging prettily above my sewing machine. 

It's my inspiration as I can finish my first quilt of the year.

To tell you the truth, I was almost giving up on FMQ, until the other day. I was trying to tell my self that FMQ is not everyone's cup of tea.

well, if you get the right machine, then  why not?? It's easy it's fun. 

Sometimes something simple is all you need!

Until then,

Happy Quilting

Learning few things

FMQ is always a challenge to me. I never get it right no matter how much free tutorial I read/saw on the web. That's how I decided to these 2 kindle books. I find reading books give  more detail information and if I forget something I can easily go back to it :)

First book I bought was Free-Motion Quilting for Beginners: And Those Who Think They Can't by Molly Hanson

The book is quite informative with picture guidance and also easy small projects for beginners.

The second one is First Steps of Free Motion quilting by Christina Cameli

This book  is more thorough in a sense that it gives more detail illustration on fmq design, how to set your machine even if your machine does't have option to drop your feed dogs, etc.  She gives few samples of design for you to practice doodling in your pad. 

After reading the two books, I immediately got down to work. I took a blank paper and start practice doodling for few mins and then took out my scraps and started the real work ^___^

  

and I turned it into this double side mug rug

It is amazing how much information you can get if you only look.  I learned the other day that apparently I should put my come thread in line with the original thread holder. I used to put my come thread on the side and it always give so much problem that I put it aside. But I like the cotton come thread. So I look up on Google and found the information. 

so, what did you learn today?

Until then

Happy quilting