FreeMotion--QuiltAsYouGo--ShirtQuilt Combination

That post title is a mouthful, but pretty much says it all: this project combines three of my favorite quilting ideas!

For a long time, I've been intrigued by the Quilt-As-You-Go concept: the one where you quilt little squares with backing and batting, and join the bits-of-quilt together as the last step. Amanda Jean at CrazyMomQuilts posted about a Quilt-As-You-Go project a couple years ago; her blog posts here and here caught my eye at the time.

I've been meaning to give it a try for ages.

Last week, it occurred to me that I had a ton of 10.5" squares cut from shirts (ah, those favorite fabric designers!) And I also had some weird-shaped batting edges & scraps & leftovers that were 12"-20" wide ... 

So, I got busy. With a little extra weekend sewing time, I managed to quilt 20-something little quilt blocks, made of shirt fabric and batting scraps. Quilting such little squares (after some recent "quilt-wrestling" getting a queen-size quilt quilted) felt soooo easy, so I just kept going, and got a bunch done. 

A few of these FMQ designs are pretty standard and basic; several of the more interesting ones were inspired or learned from other people's blogs, so I'm including links where possible in the captions below each picture.

This is the first (and for a long time, the only) style of FMQ I ever tried.
The basic stipple. Still my go-to favorite.

Loopy FMQ. Another all-time favorite.

This was a new style for me - triangle "loops".
I'd seen it used a couple places, liked it, tried it.

Adding flowers into the basic stipple just seemed worth a try.

OK. I don't like this one. I'd heard that a great way to make a circle when quilting is to stick a pin through the fabric, into a hole in the sewing machine surface, and use that as a pivot-point/center-of-circle, and just sew around. Yeah. Well. The only hole in my machine surface must be too big; the pin moved; the circles are not circle. Lesson learned.

Pebble quilting. I'd seen it used very effectively in a landscape quilt somewhere (can't seem to find the link ... Update: Aha! Found it: "Sticks and Stones" Quilt from City House Studio), and also these quilts, and figured it would be worth a try. Last year, I pebble-quilted the whole background on three different baby quilts I made. Love it!

Learned this from The Free Motion Quilting Project - Paisley

I'm not sure what this is ... but it reminds me of peacock feathers, kind of ...
another variation on my favorite stipple.

There's an easy tutorial on this Crosshatch Grid from CrazyMomQuilts

Flowing Glass, from The Free Motion Quilting Project

Bright Star, from The Free Motion Quilt Project

Stone Portals, from The Free Motion Quilt Project

Mario Vine from The Free Motion Quilt Project

Wavy Crosshatch, inspiration from CrazyMomQuilts

River Path, from The Free Motion Quilt Project

Echo Flowers ... inspired by someone's pictures of a wholecloth project ...
can't seem to find the link ...

Floral Spiral - seems like I saw something like this at CrazyMomQuilts, but I can't seem to find where ...

I started trying to make Shadow Waves from the Free Motion Quilting Project, but decided to crosshatch it and make it more like Matrix.

This one's called Microscopic World, from the Free Motion Quilting Project 

Keepin' it real: The back of this one ... has a problem ...
The upper-left corner got stuck underneath while I was quilting it,
so I have to figure out what to do about it. :-)

Feathers. Not perfect, but not bad for a first try.

Baptist Fans - No idea why they call them Baptist,
but inspiration came from here, and I liked the style,
since many of Tonya Ricucci's hand-quilted quilts
in that book I have are quilted with a similar design. 

Loopy Lines - Inspired by
the design included in this post from CrazyMomQuilts

This is the layout idea - imagine the white batting-edges trimmed and replaced with either brown or navy fabric strips ...

This is the back of the layout, in the same order as the previous picture.
I decided to quilt all these with shirt-fabric solids on front,
and shirt-fabric stripes/plaids on the back.

The next step will be trimming these up and attaching them - I'm planning to use the method in this video to attach them to each other.

And I've discovered that I LOVE variegated thread for quilting on solids. I just found that out - & may have mentioned it in my earlier post. All of these blocks were quilted with the same variegated thread. (Granted, some of the quilting styles look better in variegated thread than others, but I'm having fun figuring that out.)

When Friday comes, I'm planning to link this post to this week's FMQ Friday at The Free Motion Quilting Project, where there are usually a bunch of amazing & inspiring FMQ projects to see.