Free Motion Challenge Quilting Along Quilt

I just finished participating in the Free Motion Challenge Quilting Along with Angela Walters. It was an interesting experience as most classes are. 

We began by making a quilt from a free pattern. It appeared that I had just a couple of days to make and sandwich the quilt so I rushed trying to make everything fit and ended up losing a couple of corners on one of the yellow blocks. The pattern was free and although it was poorly written and the measurement of the finished block was impossible, it all worked out in the end. Over 10,000 people followed this course but I'm not sure a true beginner would have found much success. Personally, I found Leah Day's teaching style much better for a beginner. For a free-motion quilter with some experience, the instruction was quite sufficient.

Photos were taken outside on a beautiful day!

I tried some new things and learned more about using my quilting rulers just from watching Angela in the videos. And I ended up with a pretty 49" by 56" quilt. I used Dream Cotton batting and quilted this with 50-wt #1135 yellow Aurifil thread.

The hardest part was the DO NOT TEAR OUT ANYTHING part of the challenge. I did adhere to this but it wasn't easy! 

Each block is quilted differently; the white blocks around the yellow blocks are all quilted the same; the sashing and the borders are all quilted the same.

The first block was the meandering (stippling) block. I learned that stippling is small meandering.

The second block used echoing. We echoed the block and made a window pane. The window has diagonals and meandering on the inside.

Block number three was continuous curves.

Then we did a continuous curve flower, by far my worst block and I wasn't supposed to tear it out so I didn't; I just kept going.

Block number five was leafy meandering, a new design for me.

The other block that week was the directional leafy meander. 

The seventh block was dot-to-dot wedges - this was also a new design for me.

The companion block was a dot-to-dot wedge variation.

The following week, we did block nine, wavy lines. We did some interesting connecting of lines.

Block ten was serpentine lines which was also new to me. For some reason, they were much harder than I thought they'd be. In this photo you can also see the detail in the white block around the yellow. All of the white blocks are quilted the same. You can also see the wishbone detail in the sashing.

A week later began with block eleven - swirls. Her example was similar to jester's hat so that's what I tried. This is my best attempt ever at that design. I think I have a mental block about the jester's hat motif.

We also did the feather meander which is a swirl with feathers following the swirl line. It looks rather flowery and is hard to pick out with all of the texture.

Block thirteen used clam shells which was new to me.

That same week, we did stacked squares.

I thought this block didn't look finished enough with the rest of the quilt so I filled in the blocks. The following photo has the block tilted to the right.

Then came block fifteen - wishbones, another new design.

The last block was wishbones within curved lines.

The sashing and borders in the quilt were all done in wishbones but I changed the corner because I don't like the wishbone corner. I did an off-kilter square that mimicked the yellow squares in the white blocks of the quilt. You might be able to see the corner detail here.

The back of the quilt was a piece from my stash.

The quilt looks like spring! I took the photos outside on this gorgeous spring day. This will be a donation quilt.