Wee Woodland Baby

As I stated in an earlier post, I have been a quilting maniac.  I’m playing a little catch up with client quilts from when I was sick.  I’m not totally caught up, but I’m getting there.  Thank goodness!  Thank goodness all my clients have been super understanding as well. 🙂  All the quilts I’ve been working on recently have been custom quilts.  Custom quilting, while I love it and I love doing it, it takes the most out of me.  It’s a mental as well as a physical workout!  I wished it was more of an ab workout! LOL!!  I’ve been noticing that I’ve been quilting on my toes.  I have no idea why, but I’m developing calves of steel! 🙂  The funny thing is I don’t even realize I’m doing it.

In between custom quilts, I recently quilted an allover quilt for my client and friend, Patti. Patti also made the beautiful braid quilt I quilted here.  I love it.

 Of course I love it because it’s a Schnibbles pattern!!  The pattern is McGuffy by Carrie Nelson for Miss Rosie’s Quilt Co.  I believe she used a couple of Charm Packs and yardage from Wee Woodland by Keiki for Moda.  I don’t think I loved this fabric before, but now that I see it in a quilt…I love it!!  Both Patti and I agreed that these fabrics would make a great Fall quilt.  Patti made the quilt a bit larger by making the borders a little bigger.

I went with a freehand allover loose swirl, which I think was nice compliment to the quilt.  It’s the first time I’ve quilted this design.  I was a little nervous, but it was a ton of fun to quilt.  It was nice to change things up from custom quilting briefly.

I will definitely quilt this design again!  I’m very happy with how the swirls came out.

The backing fabric is super cute!  Patti supplied the batting, which was a Hobbs Heirloom 80/20.  She pieced it together using that fusible tape stuff for batting.  It worked quite well.  I didn’t have any issues quilting over it.  I used a light green So Fine Thread from Superior.

I get a lot of emails asking about my freehand quilting.  What do I do?  Practice, time and patience.  I don’t even really have time for doodling anymore, so my practice is just quilting.  The more I quilt, the better my quilting gets.  I saved all my first practice pieces. Once and a while, I like to take them out and glance over them just to see how far I’ve come.  It even amazes me because I don’t realize it day-to-day.  This is my very first practice piece from the day my machine was set up.  My very first swirls…

Yikes. They look like snails. 🙂 We all start somewhere.  It’s easy to get frustrated at first, heck I still do.  It’s fun to look back and see progress, but really it gives me an appreciation.  And a good laugh.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!