WIP–Red/White Blocks, Etc.

It’s Work In Progress Wednesday!

Nothing fancy today–just the red/white squares for my mini-challenge.  Three are in, and I need to get these made and sent off to those who have already finished.  Thanks, ladies for meeting your August 1st deadline early!

My tip for the day occurred to me while I was trimming up bulky flying geese units for this block.  Sometimes on seam-heavy patches, if the ruler is sliding around a lot, leave part of your hand halfway-on and halfway off the ruler (my lower thumb, above) in order to anchor it better.  Then you can successfully trim up the unit.

And then there’s this. I got it back from CJ Designs (my quilter) as we’d worked out that she’d quilt some and I’d quilt some.  I’d been putting it off for a while because I didn’t quite know how to begin.  Yesterday I went to Leah Day’s Free Motion Quilting Project website, looked at some of her designs and clicked on her videos of how to make those designs happen.

This one’s called Curvy Key.

I like this one too: Overlapping Arches.

But I woke up this morning thinking about this one: Lollypop Chain.  If you have never been to Leah’s site, click on the Lollypop Chain link and watch her quilt up her sample.  She is amazing (and so is her quilting).  So maybe I’ll try this one.  Ruth McDowell suggested taking some transparent paper (doctor’s examining table paper, architect paper, or those waxy deli squares you can buy that they use to grab things with) to try out the quilting.

Draw out your design on the paper and place it over the area you want to quilt.  This does two things: let’s you “see” the quilting on your quilt before you decide, and also puts it into your muscle memory, so when you do start to quilt, it’s not completely foreign.  It also wouldn’t hurt to first try the design on a scrap quilt sandwich before you begin on your quilt.

Now I’m off to go look around at what you all have been doing!