Free Motion Friday - Sarah is My Quilting Soul-Mate

Happy Friday!

I watched Sarah working on this quilt on instagram. And fell in mad love with it. Like, for real. I love it.

She says,

Here's my finished Tone it Down Quilt - which I didn't really tone down very much. I LOVE this quilt so much, but can't decide if I want to custom quilt it or just all over something on it. Let's see what you would do with this one =)

Sarah has been in a lot of FMF's,  so rather than go through everything step by step, I thought I'd show you guys how I go about deciding how to quilt my own quilts.

Particularly with a quilt like this where the same elements repeat (as opposed to a medallion quilt or something like that) I look for shapes that pop out in the piecing -- if I can use the piecing, I don't have to mark, so I like to do that :D.

So, I found some hearts,

Some diamonds,

A larger diamond,

And some zig-zag's.

Once I find a shape I like (in this case, my favourite is the diamonds) I would think of ways to emphasize this shape. On this quilt, I'm going to keep these in the background, so it looks like the quilted shapes are going in behind the piecing.

You can see on my Avonroy tiles quilt, that I emphasized diamonds in the background.

And diagonal lines on Bradie's quilt.

Then, I'd play with some ideas for the coloured spots,

Here I added some "X"'s on the larger squares... which, I then might to in and add some fill or dot to dot until I get the density of quilting I want.

I'd then play with idea's in the smaller areas as well. Often, when I'm loading a quilt onto my frame, I really don't know what's going to happen. I MIGHT have an idea for the basic shapes I want to emphasize, or I might not. Often, I just start quilting and see what happens.

I had a couple people email me photo's of quilts they had been inspired from FMF by, including Sue.

Who clearly is an amazing  quilter and doesn't need my help :D

If you want to be a part of Free Motion Friday, send an email to kathleen(at)kathleenquilts.com. I love seeing everyone's quilts! Thanks so much to everyone who has sent one in.

Later days! Kathleen.

Free Motion Friday is Sponsored by Sparrow Studioz and APQS Canada!