Freemotion Quilt-a-Long Update Kitty's Delight

Back of Strip Quilt

We're at the halfway point for the freemotion Quilt-a-long, so I thought I'd share some photos.  First off I have no idea how it happened, but I never photographed the back for you.  So here it is.  The strips go the opposite way of the strips on the front.  So if the back runs top to bottom the front runs left to right.

Front of Strip Quilt

I've picked a name for this quilt so rather than continuing to call this little ditty of a quilt the freemotion Quilt-a-long Quilt I'm going to start calling it Kitty's Delight, don't worry as the indexing wont change. If you click the image of the back of this quilt you will see two cat fabrics.  Those combined with the butterflies and the sweet spring colors remind me of spring breezes which my own Sunny loves so much. 

Spiral Border Quilting

Now for my quilting details.  The first thing I freemotioned was the border spirals you see above.  I think with just a little bit of alteration they will look like waves, which could turn out very handy in future quilts.  I also really like the way this looks it feels a nice to my fingers as it looks to my eyes.  Yes I tried them wide, tight, and I tried them circular, but I like them a bit loose like this.

Broad Orchid Quilting

Next was to make a symmetrical shape to fit within a set space.  After realizing that daisy type flowers work best if you stitch one petal at a time going starting north, then south, east and west and go back and do sw, se, nw, ne, and so on it really helped keeping me consistent with my petal sizes and shapes.  I'm not much of a daisy person so then I started to play with quilting orchids.  I really like these results.  

Skinny Orchid Quilting

Some orchids have skinny petals, and some have nice fat petals.  I'm a fan of the fat petals myself, but have been captivated by skinny petaled flowers as well.  I quilted these orchids by making my northern most sepal (petal) first, then moving on to the east and west petals.   Next I moved to the lip (the petal at the bottom) and sized it roughly to the type of petal I was making.  I moved to the sepals diagonal up and lastly I added two above for a nice balanced look.  Sure not all orchids are like this, but I think when it comes to quilts most people will see them as orchids or lilies regardless of how accurate something is quilted.

Spider Web Quilting

While I was quilting my thoughts turned to my youngest brother and his love for nature in the raw.  So I tried my hand at a spider web.  I think this design is better suited for a nonsymetical area where the achor points would appear more natural and I'd like to try it over a bigger area where I will have more time to freemotion the machine into those gentle dips you see in a spider's web.