FMQAL Row 1, Blocks 3 and 4.

How did your first two blocks go? I'll post a linky party next week so you can link up pictures of your first four blocks. So rest for a week, or catch up, and join the party! Or, if you're an eager beaver and a flickr fan, I've set up a flickr group for sharing on Lyn's suggestion - thanks Lyn!

Remember, if you need more solids, Pink Castle Fabrics has a great stock, including 2.5" jelly rolls for sashing, with 15% off for QuokkaQuilts FMQALers with code QQQ15. 

Now before we get going with blocks 3 and 4, a note about backtracking. Before I watched a Karen McTavish video, I didn't know about backtracking. I was only formally taught to stipple and you do not go over any line at all doing that! So seeing people go backwards and forwards along the one line to 'branch' out to other areas kind of blew my mind. You won't do this in the spirals, probably, but if you haven't 'backtracked' before, it's very liberating and opens up totally new horizons. So we'll give that a go in block 4.

The videos from the rest of today's post are brought to you by... the Free Motion Quilting Project, rather than me. :) 

Row 1, Block 3.

Spirals are a basic essential for free motion quilting, but they take a bit of practice.

Here's Leah Day demonstrating the basic spiral from the Free Motion Quilting Project.

Here's mine - not perfect, but not too bad. I need more practice at this one!

If you've already mastered the basic spiral, try one of Leah's variations - the Spiral of spirals, Ocean Current, Spiral mess, or something similar. You can find videos for these on the Free Motion Quilting Project.

Ocean Current by Leah Day

Spiral Mess by Leah Day

Because one is never enough when Free-motion Quilting, here's the next!

Row 1, Block 4.
I'm quite pleased with this one. Ok, don't freak out... We've done curves, we've done flowers, and we've done spirals. Now to put them all together. 


Start with a circle in the centre. (I tried this twice and both mine ended up off centre. I decided to make it work for me rather than work for it. You could always cheat and mark the centre of your block. That would be sensible, but I've rarely been accused of that.)


I've kind of worked a variation on Leah Day's Sunflower. You can watch how she did it here. Or you can take off and create your own. However, only use up about 3/4 of the space on your block.

Leah Day Sunflower

To fill in the blank space, we're going to use the spirals we practised in block 3. I came out of a point between two petals, drew a longish line before spiraling around, and then spiralling back to where I started so I have a tendril. then I 'echoed' that over the top a few times (not all the way around to the point always, as you lose the point as you add more echoes). Then move on to the next spiral. I chose to have some go one way and some go the other - it wasn't ADD, honest!

How's that? Manageable? It's not too scary when you break it down. 


Would also appreciate your thoughts on the speed of this QAL. Is two blocks a week too much? The third week will be a break for a linky party where you can show off your first four blocks, so it's really 4 blocks in 3 weeks... Shall I leave the last week of this month free for those who are still doing block prepping to catch up? Then  start again in February? Comments please!