Swirls!

We have been enduring the extreme cold and never ending snow of late so dealing with the elements has taken up much of my free time.  It seems like barely a day has gone by in January that I didn't have to shovel snow, today being no different.

I completed a red and beige whirlygig table runner top and have started to do the quilting on it.  I quilted echoed tear drops again in the whirligigs and decided to try my hand at swirls which are similar but it took me a few attempts to get the pattern right on paper.  So while I have been slow to quilt this table runner, I have actually spent a fair bit of time drawing practice swirls which is always a good thing.

I love Amy's free motion Quilting Adventures blog found here http://freemotionquiltingadventures.blogspot.ca. Amy loads free motion videos which I have been carefully watching to understand the movement from one section of a design to the next.  One of the issues for me is the free motion foot I was using for my Janome is a clear plastic one and I found it was distorting my view of where I'd been and where I was going.  I made a trip to my LQS and discussed the options and was pleased to discover I already had the metal open toed foot with my machine so I didn't have to purchase anything. Woo hoo!  I do believe this will work better for me.  I worked on quilting some swirls yesterday and the change of foot is great but it's a good thing the thread is the same colour as the fabric so my wonky swirls don't show up as clearly.  What's the old saying....practice makes perfect!