So I spent a good chunk of today working on some new machine quilting. As part of the Machine Quilting Challenge, I have been really exploring these new techniques. I have decided to take apart all my older quilts and requilt them, as a great way of practicing these new patterns. I truly thought I never would be able to do feathers without doing them by hand. Thanks to Diane Gaudynski’s tutorial, I can now do them, and I am enjoying all the variations.

In preparation for StashFest in Seattle, we will be packing all our quilts that use marbled fabric. I have a couple of early block-of-the-month quilts, and I spent three hours last week taking all the original stitch-in-the-ditch stitching out, as it looked pretty lame – but at the time it was the best that I could do. Now as I’m working on this, I am really enjoying the process of decided what to do for the quilting. It used to be stitch-in-the-ditch or stipple. Way more choices now.

What is also really nice to see is that I can get a lot of quilting done in a lot less time than I had originally thought. With about two hours of quilting over the last three days, I have everything done except for the borders. And I have really quilted this little quilt.

Expect pictures on Work-in-Progress Wednesday, as I should have the borders finished. All that will be left is the binding (need to find some of that border fabric (from ten years ago…I still have some) and repair a few boo-boos from taking it apart, and then add the sleeve for hanging. My to-do list grew a lot this weekend, as I have a LOT of quilts to now requilt and practice on1MQ, free motion quilting