Jen’s Day 1

Yesterday was my first day of the FMQ Challenge. I spent my break at work playing with the copy machine to enlarge my quilting patterns. Then I printed them on regular printer paper. When I got home, I pinned the quilting design right to the fabric and sewed right through the paper. The look on my husband’s face was priceless: “What in damnation are you sewing?!”

I traced the wreath first. I made my stitches very tiny since I have to remove the paper after. My lines were wobbly and not-so-good. But not bad either!

Then I traced the four feathers sprays around the wreath. These I felt more confident about and it shows! I greatly improved my backtracking skills. I even got comfortable enough to not sweat it when my needle strayed from the printed design. I spent about an hour and a half, although some of that was prep time: winding bobbins, picking out thread, clumsily trying to pin the paper to the quilt. To begin, I rolled one side of my quilt top in a tight roll and secured it with chips-clips from my kitchen. They held pretty well and I was very surprised. I am going to try to roll the other side tonight and I’ll take pictures of that too.

Yay! I’m officially in the Challenge!