First Quilt Progress

First Quilt

I had put this quilt aside for a bit while I worked on the Magnolia Quilt, but have now been inspired to get back at it. I had been struggling with the quilting on it anyway, and needed a break. I put in some very large circles, and they had begun to get tedious. So now that hard part is finished.  I did like the way the straight line quilting in the border of the Magnolia Quilt looked, so I decided to carry that idea over into this one. And I like it here, too. I`ve been wondering what to put in between the circles, and I`m thinking I might try some cross-hatching.

This, by the way, is the first quilt I ever pieced together. I saw a tiny photo in a quilt magazine, of what I now know to be a pineapple quilt. I think it was 2000 or 2001. I did some drawing and math, and made it without a pattern. If I remember right, I started the block at the corner, instead of the centre like everybody else! In any case, I had a pieced top, but no idea how to quilt it. So it got put away until recently, when I made up my mind to master both the quilt sandwich and free motion quilting. This seemed like a good practice quilt. And now that I can see the end in sight, I`d like to have it finished, of course.

I`m linking up to Leah Days Free Motion Quilting Project, here.  I first heard about Leah Day when I was in Houston for the International Quilt Festival in 2011.  I wasn`t doing much FMQ at the time, but I was sure intrigued, and I think it was then that I committed myself to becoming better / good at the quilting part of making a quilt.  Leah Day has a great site, showing with videos how to do all kinds of fmq designs. Have a look at what she and others are doing with their quilting.

I'm also linking up with Stitch by Stitch: Anything Goes, here, and the Needle and Thread network, here.  That Needle and  Thread Network is a Canadian blog, with link-ups every week for Work In Progress Wednesday, and this is the 100th posting. There are a lot of really great Canadian Quilters out there, and that blog is a great place to see their work.