Rosemary, I think your piece is beautiful. David Taylor FMQs at 25% of his machines capacity. That's pretty slow.
Those beautiful pieces of fabric are great ways to get better and better.

Looks great to me Rosemary! Any little girl would be thrilled to have it for their doll. I have yet to try my hand at FMQ - I guess I'm a chicken - if I do the quilting it is always straight line.

That is gorgeous cheater cloth. The FMQ is just fine. Most important is that the new owner approves!

What a beautiful cheater! From what I can see, your stitching looks great! If the center still feels stiff, you could try washing it. I did some really tight quilting in the border of a lap quilt. It felt like cardboard when I was done, but it feels much softer after washing. But that might depend on the batting. Mine was bamboo.

Nancy

It's gorgeous, Rosemary!

FMQ'ing is hard but your stitches look really good Rosemary! From where I see them, they are very regular in size and that makes them good in my book!

looking good

Here is my first quilty finish - a cheater quilt for Grace (the new 18" doll){!-- ia0 -->CIMG7278.JPG{!-- ia0 -->
Tried my hand at fmq going around the bird and every leaf & petal in the centre and side bars, apart from my fmq being rubbish (my hands were moving so slowly that I needed the machine to be running just above stalling speed - and boy did I stall, frequently- or went too fast ), I found that all the sewing flattened the fabrics down so much that I didn't like it at all. For the inner triangles I just did the welsh 'snail' and the outer triangles just around the centre of the flower, the petals and then along the leaf stems, rather than around the edges, with the less intense stitching I liked it much better, because it had space to bounce up and show the fact that there was wadding inside.

Fortunately the new owner loves it

I think every project counts. I can't believe how much time can be spent on a tiny quilt, or pillow. Sometimes smaller is not easier. Everybody's projects sound awesome. Can't wait to see them.

Marianne,

That counts for me.

I usually set a goal of finishing 12 projects a year. Have yet to make that goal. I did finish 11 last year. However 5 of those were doll quilts that only measured about 22" X 15". I have a stack of quilts that have already been quilted and all they need are bindings. Working on finishing those up so I will get a lot done in the next couple of months and then my completed projects will slow way down.

You people are amazing. So many beautiful quilts. Such a treat to look at. Thank you for sharing.
I have finished one side of a cushion cover; does that count?
Off to make the second block ready for the other side. Maybe I will have a finished project before the end of January
Marianne

Love your bird quilt sue

I have just started one of Ricky's Rhapsody quilts so looking forward to that, also I need to make three wall hangings for my teenage grandaughters and the blocks are about A4 size with a machine applique high heel shoe in different fabrics, but have to admit have soooo many others to make.....

Hoping to finish my son's Comic Strip Quilt first; it's nearing completion, but I didn't get nearly the sewing time in our school/work break as I thought I would so now need to get going again.

It's an original design, here's the EQ7 sketch I made of it.



The left and right side panels are done (the all black and all white sections), the frames are made for the middle section but waiting on him to finalize selection of which of his comic strips we'll photograph and print on fabric for the centers of that section (he draws a comic strip and other art, so using printable fabric we'll highlight his own artwork in the quilt), and 2.5 of the 4 pieced borders are done -- they are a modified morse code to spell out a message for him. I'm finishing up the borders then will push him to pick the comics, photo those, print them, assemble that middle section and then put the top all together. Then just have to go buy batting and -gulp!-, quilt it!

will be the first bed sized quilt I've quilted; it will be for a full size bed. The only other things I've quilted so far were the baby quilt and the tree skirt. I'm planning to use gray thread and some red thread in the red parts so it blends Not brave enough to do quilting that stands out, and the focus is meant to be the comics so I don't want to detract from that.

Once I finish this, hopefully end of January at the latest!, I'll start the Brazil quilt for BJ's architecture challenge. Although, a friend just posted photos to facebook of a grand mosque in Dubai.....imagine 1000 pure white columns, each topped with a golden pineapple and covered all over with marble vines/flowers -- stunning. Saw the photo and thought "ooooh, there's a gorgeous quilt....." (sigh) Will have to wait, as I've pledged to myself to finish the projects waiting in the cabinet before buying fabric for new projects.

I have:
-Comic Strip Quilt ("due date" of jan 31)
-Brazil Quilt (due date of end of March, right BJ?)
-middle son's quilt (due date of end of May or June, when it gets cold here)
-Radiant Suns quilt (maybe by August? September?)
-finish my diary quilt (by October, I hope)(it's mostly done, just waiting on sashing and borders)
-work all year on a BOM I'm following on-line, using fat quarters from my stash (so, due date, December)
-finish a Christmas wall hanging I started this Christmas, but am doing by hand so going slow (by next December)

THEN I can start new ideas, LOL! All of these are either started or at least drawn/have plans and fabric. I have many other plans that don't have fabric yet, so I'm trying to finish the ones that do before buying fabric for those that don't. Wish me luck! I started a new quilting only blog --- http://quiltingonawhim.blogspot.com.br/ -- if anyone wants to take a peek. It's still a work in progress, too, but it's getting there!

Thanks for all the complements y'all. I started thread painting way back in the early 80's with a woman named Amy Chamberlain who taught and made thread painting patterns for a very small magazine called Threadart, but put my machine away for many years, then started back up by learning to quilt in 2007. By then the internet had exploded with information on FMQ. I could just stitch samples all day and have nothing to show for the hours. It's nice to have a finished project!