Free Motion Bliss
It is a wonderful, sunny day in Montana. Angel started out the day napping in the sun on my quilt in progress. Both cats agree - their favorite quilt is whichever one I'm currently working on, even when it's full of pins. I don't see how that can possibly be comfortable.
The quilt of the day is a jelly roll race quilt that I started a couple of years ago. I pieced the center as part of a race at a guild sewing day, then set it aside. My guild's annual UFO challenge was just the motivation I needed to pull it back out. UFO stands for Un-Finished Object. The goal of the challenge is to pull out an old project that has fallen by the wayside and finish it. Last month, I got the borders and backing taken care of. Now, I'm on to the best part - free motion quilting.
I decided to do straight lines in the blue strips, and swirls all around them. Straight lines aren't my favorite to quilt, but they do provide great contrast when set next to designs with curves. I got the lines out of the way last Sunday, so today I get to enjoy filling in around them. This is the first time that I have tried combining swirls with little patches of pebbles, and I'm really liking the effect of the two together.