Practicing

In the evenings I am hand quilting.  So that means that during the day I am machine quilting.... or at least I felt I should be.

But if I don't know what I'm quilting then I can't do very much, can I?    I need a PLAN~!

Okay... I have a 4 1/2 inch square. What am I going to quilt in it?

I checked out my old quilting books...  I checked out machine quilting on the Internet.  But it seems like most of the design and motif quilting is done by long arm machine and I'm using a domestic machine.  I checked out the famous domestic machine quilters and got some ideas... but I don't really want to do filler quilting.

I played around on the white board.  What is that?  Can I do that?  Well, I'd better try.

I always have a practice sandwich ready for auditioning patterns and threads.  I drew in a 4 1/2 inch square and tried my hand. 

No...  Some of that is too detailed... And I get confused with the number of loops and petals.

Try again... Simple designs?  Boring. 

Enclosed in a circle?  No.  Just one more place to make errors obvious. 

I marked the square with more lines to keep me focused and came up with a fair "flower".  Did I really want flowers on this quilt?  But it works out... 

I also auditioned threads and though I have always had good results with the Japanese Miro prism threads, I did buy an expensive spool of variegated yellow Superior thread at the Long Beach quilt show this summer.  I think I'll use the yellow...  The feathers won't show up much in the colored wedges but it sure will make the center flower pop!  (Good or bad...)

And I hate to admit this but I didn't like the feathers I was making so I've taken them all out and will try again today...

Maybe I should concentrate on the center squares for awhile...