Quilt Along with Leah Day - Week 6

Thursday  Feb 9th
I was so glad to see Leah blog this week. A big sigh of relief that I won't be getting myself into piecing more quilts. I can just focus all my energy into finishing up the two quilts which I started for Week 4 and Week 5.

This is really fun, I wish I had more time to piece more quilts. Sometimes I feel I get hung up on small details and may be trying to be a perfectionist. Which is sometimes hard on my self.

Okay, lets talk about more stippling now. I feel I don't have control over my stippling. Actually looks like it always takes a life of its own. So, I would like to go back and practice Week 1's Wiggle Along to get a hold of the basic shapes for stippling. I am using 1/2inch scale, so that I can quilt my butterfly quilt with this. Hoping this practice is going to help with my butterfly quilt.
Here is my new changing pad :-):

Practicing on 1/2 inch scale stippling

Wednesday Feb 15th
This was a very challenging and intense week for me trying to finish up the two quilts which I started in Week 4 and Week 5. I wish I was able to finish the binding too for both of them. But I'm just happy that I was able to finish quilting both of them.


Baby Changing Pad:
I'm glad to say that at least I finished the binding on this one.

Butterfly Quilt:
This was a very tricky quilt. Had I planned it ahead of time how I was going to

1. quilt around the butterfly
2. quilt inside the butterfly
3. Allover quilting 

It would have looked better. But having said that this is my practice quilt and being a beginner I'm very happy with the results. The quilt looks really beautiful and once I finish the binding I will add more pictures here.

Sawtoo-Star-Quilt/Wall hanging:
This one was very tough to finish and took lot of time this week to quilt. But I am happy that I was able to finish quilting it to show for this week.
I wanted to combine this to enter for SewCalGal's 2012 FMQ Challenge, so I did the feather plume all over the borders of this quilt.
Thank you Leah for your post yesterday. Before I read your post I was wondering what I should be using for a filler design around the feathers. After I read your post, decided to do micro stippling around the feathers. I think it came out nice. I'm so in love with stippling, especially dense/micro stippling. Stippling is overall so relaxing and smoothing. The flow just helps me to relax so much. Having done the feather I can compare how different stippling and quilting feather plume are. Feathers are very labor intensive but they do look beautiful.

Last week if you saw my pictures of the saw-tooth-start wall hanging there were lot of white space, but this was just perfect for quilting feather plumes. I just went with the flow finishing one feather at a time and then branching out from there. Finally micro stippled around the feather plumes.

Areas of Improvement - Speed:
I constantly feel that this is something I'm struggling with all the time. To get smooth curves I need to maintain certain speed with my pedal. But when I'm faster with my pedal I tend to move my hands around too fast too. I need to get this pedal and hand co-ordination when I can maintain the speed with the pedal to be medium and then my hand to move slowly enjoying the quilting I'm doing. As a beginner I can't complain but to practice more and more.....more.

This week I really don't have any questions. I'm just glad that I was able to finish quilting two of my quilts. I would have been extremely happy if I had finished the binding but that's okay I guess. I can't beat myself over that.

Thank you again Leah for the quilt alongs. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be able to find time to quilt or improve my FMQ :-). You're AWESOME!