Having Some Fun

     Although there are a couple quilted items yet to be completed, their due date is still a little ways off ... today, I just had some fun.
     I watched several Karlee Porter YouTube videos and ordered her book on Graffiti Quilting and I also have a couple of 'adult' colouring books .... so the idea was to combine the ideas and go for it.

      My first try was to 'copy' a rough outline of one of Karlee's designs which is the complete opposite of her style of quilting design. She says to 'make it up as you go' .... well, part way through, I figured out she was right. What I was doing wasn't natural to 'my flow' so my first bit of fun looks like a mess, but was worth experimenting.

      She also does a lot of couching ... which I started to try (top corner). I have a couching foot and I have a quilting foot but I do not have a combined foot .... so, that idea didn't work!!
     So lessons learned .... I am smoother going from left to right than vice versa; I like working in smaller areas; I really should use the same colour thread in the bobbin as in the top and I should see if one of the local Husqvarna dealers has the combined couching-free motion foot. Even though Karlee uses a Sweet 16 machine, I think it is possible to get a similar effect with a smaller machine.

On to the next thing .... this was more fun!

     Using an  idea from the colouring book and not pre-drawing where I wanted to go, I tried some free-form fill-in-the-spaces:

     A little closer to what I eventually want to try ... a landscape quilt done in a zen-doodle style and eventually a structures / architectural style piece of work done in a zen-doodle or adult-colouring book style. Not sure if I will like the end result but worth a try.  I still need to work on making smoother movements while machine quilting. Using the needle is NOT like handling a pencil to draw.