Practicing McTavishing with Amy Week 2

 

This week I tried some McTavishing around some flowers and leaves.

McTavishing Practice with Amy

Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventure
I'm going to take advantage of Amy's free motion McTavishing adventure this month.  Hopefully I'll end up with some designs I feel confident to add to my quilting repetoire.  It sure is fun and liberating to practice.

I like to use Angela Walters technique of breaking a large area into boxed shapes then adding the quilting. On the right I made a one sided feather and then added the rest.

Wake Me Up to Kona Bloghop

Hurray, it's my turn for the Wake Me Up to Kona Bloghop.
I have had sew much fun making these projects.
Participating in this Kona bloghop was the perfect opportunity to
 practice my free motion quilting, make some practical useful items
and try my hand at some new techniques.

As always, a big shout out of thanks to our marvelous cheerleaders,
Madame Samm at Sew We Quilt and Carol at Just Let Me Quilt.
Amanda Murphy and her beautiful book Color Essentials, 
Sunrise and Sunset bundles from Robert Kaufman and
lovely threads from Aurifil are our wonderful sponsors.
Here are the other bloggers on my day. I can't wait to see what everyone creates with these wonderful fabrics.

January 20

More Stars in Comanche

Buzzing and Bumbling

Quilting Quietly

Grammie Q’s

The Quilted Cat

The Quilting Queen Online

Lauraluvsloons

This pillow sure brightens up my living room couch on a wintry January day!
Machine appliqued figure skate (my favorite Winter Olympic sport) from a Fig Trees Pattern. 
Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt inspired small snowflakes and
I FMQed the larger snowflakes after practicing her pine boughs.  

For my Christmas table I made these placemats.
I loved using Kona white for my Gail Pan embroidery pattern and the red to practice my FMQ.
Inspiration for the quilted Christmas feathers came from Amy at 
Amys Freemotion Quilting. The word quilting from Leslie at MarveLes Art Studio.

I thought that the Kona could be more than just a palette for my FMQ practice.
I made a nice collage of vintage seahorse prints from the internet and a turtle print we had.
Then I ironed an 8x11 sheet of interfacing to the Kona and ran it through my printer, transferring
the collage onto the KONA light blue. I made my own fabric!
I added the turtle applique, some Kona sashing and some FMQ.

Here's the collage in the tote I made.

For the back of the tote I tried out my new Derwent watercolor pencils.
First I applied the Kona seahorse applique. Next I embroidered the seahorse on the left.
Next I quilted the water bubbles, kelp and threadwork on the applique.
Lastly I added the color with dry pencils and applied a thin coat of Folkart textile medium to set the colors.

I tried my hand at a practice whole cloth and added color to my FMQ.
The KONA white definitely makes a wonderful canvas for quilting and painting.
Inspiration for this technique is from a Deborah Louie whole cloth quilt.

I hope you enjoyed my adventures using KONA solids.
I have loved seeing all the wonderful projects made by sew many talented quilters.

Happy beautiful winter morning from our lake in NH!

This is a shout out to Madame Samm for her wonderful button pin tutorial.

Practical quilted presents

Amanda's pillow
Design inspired by a Lynette Anderson block. My design for the Basset Hounds.

Kim's This n That project bag to hold her artist pens and supplies.
She chose the fabric - I let the fabric tell me how to FMQ it.

Pin cushion and pins.
Thanks Madame Same at Sew We Quilt blog for the excellent directions and sources to make the pins. 

Kelley's leather backpack.
She found a leather skirt at Goodwill for $3 and I designed this bag for her.

A bag I designed along the lines of an Atkinson pattern. More pins.
I love how you can see my feathers.

This is Kim Diehl's Things that Grin in the Night.
This was a great way to use some of my stash and sew much fun to applique, piece and quilt. 

Here's the pillow top I'm making for our friends, Tim and Charlie.
Jilly and Beau are our dog Kylie's BFF's.

Here's a close-up of my feathers.
After lots of doodling practice, I finally got brave and tried
them on a real project!


This is the inspiration block from Lynette Anderson.
It will be one of eight applique blocks on our king - size quilt I'm making.

Embroidered Wall Hanging for my sewing/sun room

I love this stitchery by Bare Roots. It will go perfectly on the wall where I sew.
I didn't machine quilt this one because I embroidered with the batting already in place.
I did a running stitch with Finca #12 floss around the sections
to attach the backing to the front.
This will be in the Cocheco Quilt Guild show in October.