DECEMBER FMQC

The back side of my December lesson.

Patsy Thompson is the December teacher for the Free Motion Quilt Challenge. If you click her name you can see what she is all about. Amazing. I am probably the least experienced and least talented of the FMQC participants and what I saw HERE really made me scared to try this month's challenge. 
But it is the final challenge and to get all the way to the end and not finish, no. Not me. So I plunged in. At first I thought maybe I would increase the size of the bars that were to be filled. For instance, the first frame near the center is a half-inch! Surely I would need at least an inch in width to work that. 

 No. That will absolutely not do. I would do as her printouts indicated. I marked off two half-inch frames, two one-inch frames, and a two-inch frame and got to work. 

Frame 1 and 3 have similar somewhat challenging shapes so that is probably why they are worked first. Of course, I enjoyed the free-form pebbles in the corner of frame 3! Back to frame 2, also enjoyable. 
I liked making frame 4 much better than I thought I would and I found the corner pieces fun--kind of like ears of corn with shucks on each side. The last frame was going to be scary for me. Feathers, you know. 

I marked carefully and began. I kept saying to myself, "They are just plume-y leaves." I saw a little improvement and was able to increase my speed. When I saw that I had room for another frame, I made a little narrow divider between the assignment and what I would do extra for my own satisfaction and drew out more feathers.

It was a real challenge but I am now even more confident with my feathers. In fact, I am now not afraid to use my machine to quilt and I might even do feathers.

Front side of my December lesson