Casey's Quilt

I watched a woman  Suzanne McNeill on YouTube the other day talk about her book, "Ten Minute Blocks".  
Video here   I watched that video three times, in a row ... just trying to figure out how she put those triangle things in the middle of those great BIG blocks. She made it look fun, and easy to boot!  I bought her book from Amazon, because after all, she looked like a really nice lady, and I decided to make a colorful wall hanging quilt for my oldest daughter, Casey. I knew I wanted to try my hand at Free Motion Quilting, and those great big blocks were just the thing. I needed something a little special in the center of the triangles that were in the center of the large blocks though. You can't see it in this photo, but there's quilting in those triangles! hehehe

Since my hubby gave me a flower template for Christmas, (bless his heart, he tries so hard, I can just see the man roaming around Joanne's Fabrics with his eyes glazed over) that looked like it would fit perfectly. I wanted to mark the area first but the white chock pen and the blue disappearing marking pen both failed me. (how do people get those things to work?) Then I remembered buying Sulky stabilizer without even knowing what it was.  

Sulky looks like plastic wrap. After reading the directions, I realized that it is used with those very special, expensive embroidery machines that I could only dream of owning one day.

So, I said to myself, "what the heck, give it a try". I traced the flower onto the plastic wrap stuff with a regular pen, then pinned the plastic to the area I wanted to free motion quilt, dropped my feed doggies down, put in the open toed foot, and went to town. For the first time. Yes, it was my very first try at free motion quilting. (I have since learned that you can do the same thing using freezer paper! But, that will have to wait for another time).







It worked! Not so well done, but not too bad for a first go. It's going to be a wall hanging, so I added some colorful, large buttons to the middle of the flower in the middle of the triangle in the middle of the extra large squares.

Casey said she loves it!

I'm taking all the scraps from this quilt, cutting them into strips and sewing them back together again. I'll let you know how that one turns out. Until next time, THANKS for visiting!