One Last Finish

I got one more quilt finished for the year!

Truth be told it could have been finished a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to free motion quilt it.

I had never done that and needed to practice.

I practiced and practiced.

So I finally bit the bullet and did it.

Did I make mistakes? Absolutely.

Finished is perfect in my mind.

This quilt had a couple of firsts for me.

It was paper pieced and partly free motion quilted.

I designed this table runner in my quilting software.

I printed off the patterns, cut out the sections, and started sewing.

Look how closely the mock up matches the final product.
Isn't that cool?

 Here's a stack of tree sections.

Sewing by numbers goes really fast!

Once all the sections are sewn they get trimmed.

Next the papers are torn off.

All that's left is to sew the sections together.

They went together really fast.

(I used the polar bears as the backing fabric too. It was an awesome thrift store find.)

In case you don't know what free motion quilting (FMQ) is, it's you doing all the work.

You are the one controlling the material's speed and movement, not the machine.

It's harder than it looks.

After many practice sessions I finally decided to go for it.

I so badly wanted it to go perfectly...which is why I procrastinated for so long.

At first it was hard for me not to see the parts I didn't like.

But I did it and that's all that matters.

I'm still learning.

This section has nice rounded bends in the quilting.

The quilting motif is called stipple

It's a common quilting pattern.

I free motion quilted the tree blocks.

I used my walking foot to stitch in the ditch around the striped sashing

and add diamonds in the border.

Christmas tree table runner

12 1/4" x 35 1/4"