Free Motion Quilting and Charming Hearts

Today was a busy day. I taught a free-motion quilting class. It was fun, and I enjoyed encouraging my seven students in their attempts at mastering some basic free-motion. I know how hard it is when you first start and think that it all looks so bad. They all did quite well, the machines were pretty well behaved (yahoo!) and I hope they will continue to practice and move forward in their skills!

I showed them my first attempt at stippling and it is truly horrible! Much of it looks like scribbling with thread. I'll have to take some pictures of it before I hang it back up so I can share with you! Nothing like looking at one of your first attempts at something to make you realize how far you have come.I finished these table runners this week as sample for my Charming Hearts pattern. Am still refining the instructions, but should be able to get that listed on Etsy sometime this week. I am getting faster at writing the patterns, but it's still a struggle. Hopefully later this year will be upgrading my laptop and that will make an improvement for me in the illustrations.
Here is the quilt I finished for a customer before Christmas. Isn't it pretty? I like how the quilting came out - I did outlining around the animals and Noah and the Ark. Then I drew the lines in the border and stitched those with the walking foot. I used white thread on the back as well as the front, and was a little concerned about how it would look.

I think it looks great! Love the contrast and how it brought out the design. I didn't really mean for my waves at the bottom to align with the ones at the top, but it worked out well also. I enjoyed working on this one, definitely a cute little quilt. The customer supplied the backing as well as the fluffy poly batting. I don't usually choose the fluffy batts, but they are nice for baby quilts, very cuddly and soft.

I'm excited about Project Quilting starting tomorrow! Last year I didn't participate because we were preparing for my daughters wedding, but this year I am ready to make some fun quilts. Cannot wait to see what the first challenge is going to be tomorrow. Stay tuned and you'll get to see my work in progress! Maybe you might want to join in on the fun, too!