quilting practice

I've been totally into quilting lately. I finally learned how to quilt quickly so that it doesn't turn into a monster project! I'm still learning, though. 

If you are interested in quilting, you should definitely check out my quilting inspiration board on pinterest, as well as this post.

So what have I done so far?

Well, for the Retro Pillow Challenge, I finished the front part of my pillow cover. 

Here are some photos of the process.

piecing together the "mosaic"

done piecing and squaring off, as well as adding a white border

basted the quilt sandwich and marked circles for hand-quilting

done hand quilting!

hand-quilting closeup (running stitch)

I relied on the Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman of "Oh, Fransson!" which was so much fun to do:

Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow [tutorial PDF]

Moving on to the back of the pillow, I intended to make a machine quilted and bound overlapping back, as the above tutorial instructs (rather than use a zipper). Basically it's just two overlapping pieces of quilted fabric, and the pillow is inserted in between them.

Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow - back

I cut one back piece 52 cm wide, but after quilting it had shrunk down to 50 cm. So I decided to use this piece as a practice mat for binding. I cut the binding 7 cm wide which was too wide - it should be 2.5 inches (6.3 cm). It was good practice though!

quilting and binding practice mat - one side

quilting and binding practice mat - other side

free motion quilting... I can surely improve my technique!

I'm going to re-do the back using a free-style machine quilting, but not using the free-motion foot (darning foot) - using a straight seam instead (regular foot). There are several gorgeous designs here, both for a straight-seam foot and for a free motion foot.

Here are the quilting designs using a straight stitch (regular sewing foot):

[source]

[source]

They are all so beautiful, and I'm still not sure which to pick! Maybe I'll just go for the quasi-straight parallel lines (bottom right mat in the top picture of the above two).