The hardest thing I've ever tried to do.

I am making another quilt.  But I am trying a new-to-me technique, free motion quilting.  I recently took a class on fmq, and this is the first time I'm trying to use what I learned.  It is so hard.  So much harder than I expected.  It's basically like using your sewing machine to draw on the quilt.  You can create any shape or pattern with the stitches.  You completely control the movement with your hands.  When I looked at my quilt I could envision where I wanted the stitches to go.  But when I actually got the quilt under the needle, I had a lot less control than I would have hoped.  Lines that are meant to be curved are pointy.  Lines that are meant to be smooth are jagged.  By the looks of these stitches, you would think a small child was sitting at my sewing machine.  No kidding.  Part of me can't believe I am giving this quilt away.  It's a baby gift for a friend.  I should have practiced on something that wouldn't be seen by anyone else.  I did practice, actually, quite a lot, on scraps.  But it certainly wasn't enough.  Oh well.  At the very least this quilt will have a uniform look, messiness across the board.  Plus, it will still keep a baby warm, and the fabrics are super cute.  So I will try not to be too embarrassed when I give it away.  I am getting better, I think, very slowly.  And it's exciting to think about a point in the future when I might actually be good at this.  For now it remains extremely challenging.

Two ladies are helping me, via their blogs, to get through my first experiment in free motion quilting.  The first happens to be a lady who has seen me give birth.  Christina was a young, compassionate doula when we had S in Chicago.  She was our advocate and encourager during that horrible hospital birth.  Now she is a midwife and mother in Portland, and a very accomplished quilter.  She hosted a quilt-a-long on her blog last year, exploring all the different options of free motion techniques.  Those posts didn't mean much to me at the time, but now I am pouring over them and soaking up her knowledge, pointers, and humor.  She was even so kind as to share some pictures of her first free-motion work, and guess what!  It looks A LOT like mine does now!  So I have hope that I will get better at this, just like she did.

The second lady is Leah Day, who is posting hundreds of free motion designs, along with videos of how to stitch them, on her blog.  It's super helpful to watch the videos instead of just trying to figure out how to stitch something just by looking at it.  Also she organizes her designs by difficulty level, so I am spending a lot of time studying the Beginner page.

Struggling with my tension on the back.  The thread is basically laying on the fabric.  I've tightened it up a bit and it seems better.  Still not great.

This is supposed to look like a design from Leah Day called River Path.  Hers is beautiful and smooth and mine is, well, I guess it looks okay if you don't look too closely.

Here I am trying to do pebbling.  Um...... yeah.  Looks so simple and easy.  Is not.

Here you can see Leah's design River Path.  It's one of the most attractive fmq designs I've seen, so I sure hope I can improve upon my initial attempt.
And here is Christina's pebbling.  Look how neat and tidy those circles are!  How does she do that?!

I'll be back later to share this quilt when it is finished, and hopefully with some more quilts over the summer.  That's all for now.  I'll leave you with some cute pictures of me and my boys on Mother's Day.