Free-Motion Quilting Goal Success!

I have been a semi-regular participant in the One Monthly Goal link-ups at Elm Street Quilts over the past few years, with a success rate of around 50%. For August, instead of a project-based goal like joining a group of blocks into a finished quilt top, I decided to concentrate on improving my skills, specifically free-motion quilting.

I bought a Juki J-150QVP machine a couple months ago, and in an attempt to become more comfortable with free-motion quilting on it, my One Monthly goal for August was to spend at least 15 minutes every single day doing some free-motion quilting. If I missed a day, I needed to make up that time within the next three days (my personal challenge, my rules!) There were only two days all month with no FMQ, both happening last week when we had houseguests, but I did make up those days since then.

The first quilt to be finished was this Rainbow LeMoyne baby quilt at the beginning of the month. It had been partially quilted on my old Singer machine earlier in the year, but finishing it was much easier with the new Juki.

The next FMQ project was to finish the quilting on this green Crossroads quilt. The top for this quilt was made in 2014, and I had already done some stitch-in-the-ditch quilting around the green rectangles in the blocks. I added FMQ designs in the white background squares and the borders. You can read more about this quilt in this post.

While I prepped the next quilt, my fill-in FMQ project was quilting a couple of little hearts. These were started in a Zoom class I took with Mel Beach back in May called Crazy in Love with Free-Motion Quilting. They both need to have the quilting threads buried and the outer edges finished off somehow. Each heart measures about 7" wide x 5.5" high. It's hard to see the stitching on the upper heart because the thread color blends in too much, but the bright tangerine thread on the lower heart shows up very nicely!

The last FMQ project for March has been this orange and green Diagonal Squares quilt. There are ten different fabrics in this quilt, and each fabric is being quilted with a different color thread and a different quilting design. The photo above shows the full quilt top before any quilting. It measures 40.5" x 48.5".

I've been working on this quilt gradually, spending one or two days on each fabric. Eight of the ten fabrics have been completed, all except the light green with yellow and the green and orange mosaic print, both near the upper right in the above photo. The border around the quilt, which has that same mosaic print, will be the last area to be quilted. I'd hoped to have this quilt finished by the end of the month, but it just didn't happen.

Most of my quilting designs on these blocks has been following the prints in the fabrics. This yellow and orange batik turned out especially well!

I'm feeling much more comfortable with free-motion quilting on my new machine, and my One Monthly Goal really motivated me to keep working at it. I'm thinking I might even try to continue the personal challenge for another month!

Linking up with:

One Monthly Goal at Elm Creek Quilts

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at Inquiring Quilter

Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA