Fabric Tuesday 3/20/12 and a Demo

Okay, I'm ready to quilt February's UFO, but I needed to figure out how to quilt it.  I decided on a feather circle that to me looks a little like a flower. I want to practice FMQ, but I'm not so hot at it yet.  So I'm going to tinker with using freezer paper and FMQ.  I like using freezer paper to guide me around the motif, but hate removing it, especially in places where I've traveled over the line twice (or more!).  So here goes:

First I chose a motif from Forest Quilting  where you can find 5 pages of free motifs!  Thank you! You can see the motif I cut out under the ruler (so you could see it flat).

I then made a sandwich with an orphan 6 1/2" block.

I ironed on the freezer paper motif to the center of my block. Be sure to pin your sandwich in the corners.

 I then marked with a yellow water soluble pencil where the lines of the petals meet the circle.

Then at one of the v's of the petals I brought up the bobbin thread.  My stitch will go up and toward the right around the top of the leaves only all around the motif and come back to my starting point.

Just before I got to the starting point, I cut along the last line from v to circle.  Here is where I start to FMQ.  I stitched from the v to the circle and then removed the paper.  I used the one curve I had just done as my sample for what the other vertical lines will look like.  Now the needle is at the circle.  So I went along to the next yellow dot in the circle and then went up to the next v, repeating this around the circle til it was all done.

Here is the front of my quilted circle flower,

and here is the back.  Okay my combining the freezer paper method and FMQ worked!  No paper to pull out of double stitches and I can use the motif on another square.  Because I don't want to throw this practice piece away, I am going to trim the sandwich and bind it.

and here it is all done and ready for gifting.                                                                                                     I think I'll give it to a friend who had us over for dinner as a thank you.

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story and Connies Linky Tuesday Party.  You'll find both buttons on my sidebar.  Off to see what eye candy you post there!  Hope you enjoyed my practice demo.