Progress in Free-Motion Quilting...

This quilt is the result of some additional practice in free-motion machine quilting. I didn't make the quilt top. It's the creation of quilting friend Jan who started out to make a table runner and some matching placemats. Somehow, she instead turned it into a quilt top which she slated for one of the many donation quilts our guild gives each year to several worthy causes. Jan heads up the donation quilt project and periodically delivers quilts to the recipients. She brought the top to a meeting and asked if anyone would take the top and complete it. I found the asymmetry of her setting appealing, so I agreed, and home it came. I like quilts that sort of invent themselves, as this one did.

It took awhile, but at last the quilt is finished and ready to return.  I'm glad I took this project on. As it turns out, I'm happy enough with how the machine quilting turned out. I use a Bernina with the Stitch Regulator for some quilting, but uninstall it and quilt without it some of the time. I can't decide if the Stitch Regulator is a reliable help, or if it's just as easy without it. Do you have experience using a stitch regulator on your machine? I'd be interested to hear your take on its usefulness. (By the way, if the fonts in this post look different colors in your display, I'm clueless as to why that is. I was unable to correct it. Apparently some things changed in the short time I was away from Blogger.)

Thanks to the Sew Cal Gal FMQ Challenge, I was able to apply a few of the tips and patterns I learned in the monthly tutorials. That meandering ivy you can see in the photo from the back of the quilt (below) is one of the lessons I've used more than once. It's still a challenge to wrestle with the bulk of a piece while quilting it, but I did persevere to the end. Now to apply my newly developed machine quilting skills to the pile up of unfinished quilts awaiting completion! Now there's a lofty goal.