Something New Sampler: Quilting Edition

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to go to a sew-in hosted by my local Modern Quilting Guild - 10+ hours of sewing and bonding - oh, and seeing one of our ladies go into labor. Crazy!

I was hoping to take some pictures during a sunny naptime today - but the sun stayed away and naptime didn't happen, so we have these somewhat acceptable pictures :)

I have a love/hate relationship going on with quilting this sampler. I love the pebbling. Love it. Love doing it, love the way it feels, love the way it looks...not so much a fan of how much of my time it is eating up.

I'm thrilled with the texture created by the quilting through the super thick folding block, - all those layers of fabric give it a little bit of extra loft.

I'm not so much a fan of the way the back of the quilting looks...the thickness made it hard to quilt this block, so my stitches are really wonky lengths, and some backlash happened. Boo :(

I have no idea how to feel about the back. I smashed together fabrics in not so great of a way. The blue was cool at first because the quilting was obvious, but now so are any mistakes. Note to self for future: always use busy prints on the back of heavily quilted projects! It hides a multitude of sins.

I have a few things to tear out, as well - see the wavy lines on the right side of the above photo, moving across the bargello block? The left to right movement is pushing the fabric too far to one side, and is causing bunching. I'm in the midst of ripping this quilting out.

The spiral in the upper left/middle part is on the clamshell block and I was freehanding it, but I'm not a fan of how imperfect it is. I'm too type A for that! I'm planning on redoing this block as well.

I also loved the negative space in this quilt until I looked at this photo just now...now it looks like too MUCH negative space! Sigh. See? Love/hate...hopefully it looks better once the batting is trimmed down and it's all bound.

My favorite block is the sashiko block. I quilted tightly around all the stitching and I think it really helped it pop and not distract. I wasn't sure how I would end up quilting this, and when I thought of this, I was pretty pumped. I was originally planning on an all-over pattern.

The pebbling is held in by a few rectangles, which I straight line quilted with my walking foot. On the outside of these, I'm planning on doing some wacky straight lines. And yes, I marked it all!! Don't judge :) I'm too type A to do it on the fly...plus I hate my walking foot (crazy amounts of drag and very slow), so I've started using my FMQ foot for all the straight lines. So it's more important to have them marked.

So I'm excited about all of your projects! I'm making my way through them and loving what I'm seeing. Don't forget voting will start at midnight tonight - about 30 minutes from now - so it may be open by the time you see this post. Vote away!! Don't forget to ask your readers and friends to vote as well :)