When to pick out free motion quilting

Have you ever done some free motion quilting that you felt ruined the whole quilt? I did, and because of it I tucked my nearly finished quilt away into a closet for about a year. I didn't know how to deal with it. I was happy with most of the quilt but I thought the free motion quilting I did on one block was ugly. My eyes kept going there and nowhere else on the quilt. I had already picked out a portion of it once before and improved it somewhat, but I still didn't like it.

Picking out free motion quilting

Today I decided it was now or never. I had to pick out all of my free motion quilting on this block or I would never finish this quilt. It actually went quite well. I am almost done. It took me a few hours, but I think it was worth it. I was very careful not to make any holes in the fabric. That was my worst fear. Tomorrow I will finish picking the last little bit, and then I can get back to free motion quilting this quilt and finally get it finished.

/

See the lovely pile of thread I picked out?

Christmas present block

I am having a "Christmas in July" kind of a day. I am making blocks for a Christmas quilt.

I love to experiment and try new things with every quilt I make. This time I am experimenting with gold fabric. It is quite thin and seems like it would fray very easily. I bought one meter of it. I also bought one meter of lightweight fusible interfacing. I placed the gold fabric down on the floor (carpet), then placed the interfacing on top of it. I put my iron on the "synthetic" setting which is low heat then slowly ironed over the entire surface. The two were nicely fused together and ready for cutting. Now I am finding the fabric easy to work with. No fraying whatsoever. No distortion when I am sewing the pieces together.

The bow at the top of the present is made of a flying goose. This quilt block can be made pretty much any size.  I learned a method of making flying geese by watching this video

make four flying geese at once 

If you would like to make your flying geese four at a time, you may find this chart helpful for figuring out the sizes to cut your fabric.

 flying goose chart and assembly instructions

Happy quilting everyone!