QAYGFMQAL Row 2, Blocks 1 and 2

Our first row is finished! One down, 5 to go. It was AWESOME seeing other people's work doing similar designs. I felt very honoured that there were people thinking my idea was good enough to follow along with. :)  One big surprise was that Leah Day popped by the blog and said hi, and has offered to do a guest post a bit later on. I didn't ask initially cos I thought she was a) too famous and b) to busy to bother with a lil quokka from the other side of the world. But she is just a LOVELY person so look out for a guest post or two later on! And she was intrigued by the app I used to do the original video clips - it's called 'Explain Everything' - so expect to see some more videos like that popping up on Leah's Free Motion Quilting Project.

This row is a row of pointy edges. We've done curves; now we're going to practise free-motioning straight lines. Eek! Crack that bottle open, or don't as it doesn't matter so much if these ones are jerky. In fact, for the second block, ask someone to scare you at intervals and see how jerky you can get it. (Only joking - hit the bottle.)

Row 2, Block 1: Stippled squares

To start with, this block is from a quilt by one of my favourite modern quilters, Elizabeth Hartman of Oh Fransson. It’s a variation on the loop-the-loop we did in the first week, but instead of looping, squares. You can see the whole post about this quilt here. Absolutely no curved lines allowed! It’s another liberating, go-where-you-want design. I’d practice first on paper, then go for your life!

To help you out, here's one of my dodgy little instruction videos.

And here's my finished block. You'll notice at the end of the video I couldn't resist pointing out all the bad bits in my block. There's that perfectionism I mentioned earlier in the week... I was having ongoing issues with the Singer playing up again, and last Friday was the due date when I'd either be returning it and waiting for a new machine, or throwing it off a bridge... So I was desparate to get two blocks out the way in case I was stuck without a good darning foot. Luckily, I got a refund, and something else came home with me the very next day... (more on that later). So expect a DRAMATIC increase in quality after this week's blocks!

Row 2, Block 2: Lightning bolts

Someone's probably already done this design. I started playing with jagged lines like lightning bolts early last year. So I'm calling it lightning bolts, even though they don't really look like it. 

Sometimes a quilt just calls for jagged quilting. My baby dragon is a case in point. He needed something sharp and dense to give him some oomph, or the knights would get him while he was sleeping.

You can see the quilting a bit more clearly here.

 And another lil video here:

:) Happy FMQing!