Little Man Quilt Finished

Today it's gray and raining in our neck of the woods, shrinking the mountains of snow and turning the snow on the sidewalks to sludge.  It gave me a perfect morning to snuggle in bed and sip tea while listening to a new Jessy Bell Smith C.D. and finishing up the last bit of stitching on the binding on my Little Man/Giraffe Love quilt.

It's hard to believe that a week ago we had so much snow.  The  weather has been all over the map lately so we could get more snow.  But it does feel like there is a hint of spring in the air.

Last week I took this picture of how the snow sculpted itself into this interesting curve.  I thought I would share it with you.



Here are some pictures of the "Little Man" quilt. It's a pretty simple quilt , perfect for practicing free motion quilting.

One of my goals for this year is to improve my free motion quilting.  I've had this goal for a few years but I just never seem to get around to it.  Maybe this year will be the year!
     This is about the 4th time I've attempted fmq on an actual quilt and the first time I've done anything any where near as big as this.  The largest thing previously was a table runner.   I have to admit it turned out better than I had anticipated.  I've always found the meandering stitches very difficult to do, so I decided to try this elongated figure eight across the quilt.  It's decidedly not perfect but pretty good for a first attempt.  I was amazed at how much the weight of the quilt, on even this crib sized quilt affected my ability to move the quilt.  All in all I'm happy with it and ready to try the same technique on a lap sized quilt soon.  There is no way to get better than to keep on going!

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday.

First two finishes of 2014

I've been checking out the quilts on other quilter's blogs for a couple of years now,and I've often thought I should have my own blog and join in on the fun.....but I have to admit I'm a bit of a technophobe (is that a real word?)  Anyhow I decided to sign up for Rachel's at Stitched in Color, Colour Intensive class (I'd give you a link if I knew how to do that) and that required a Google account so I was half way there!  The fact that I am  able to move forward  on this at all is because of my son who kindly showed me how to get photo's onto the computer and encouraged me to just start posting  It's a bit of an adventure as half the time I can't even find my way here, but it should get easier now that I've jumped in to the waters, just like free motion quilting l.o.l.
    So I have two quilt tops to share.  The first is stacked coins. That's a picture of it above on my design wall.  It's from Julie Herman's book Skip the Borders.  Here's another picture of it on my bed.

The original quilt had green sashing which I switched out for blue.  Blue is pretty much my favourite colour to quilt with!
     My second finish is Camille Roskelly's "Little Man"  quilt.  I think it's in Simplify.  I had bought a fat quarter pack of  "Giraffe Love"  and when I saw "Little Man"  I knew it was the perfect quilt for the fabric.

 Here's a close up of the giraffe's!

I'm looking forward to practicing my free motion quilting on this one. I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts , Finish it up Friday.  This is so exciting!