I’ve been saying this to myself the entire time I’ve been working on the Dinosaurs quilt.

I have carefully cut, trimmed, & measured every step of the way.

But still–there is some degree of wonkiness! I’m depending on the quilting and the laundering to straighten it up a bit!

From the beginning of putting this project together I was very indecisive about how I would quilt it. I’m not a big fan of dense quilting. I like my quilts soft and comfy. The more stitching, the stiffer the quilt gets. But I also know that this is for a little boy and it will be washed and dried A LOT! The more quilting, the sturdier the quilt is. So I wanted to have more than “stitch in the ditch”.

Then I was stuck at home for two weeks with the virus of the decade and had plenty of time to ponder the quilting. And decided that I would learn how to do Free Motion Quilting (FMQ). I had tried it several years ago and was NOT happy about how it turned out. On my first try I purchased an extension table for my Baby Lock Unity which I understood was a requirement and watched a Craftsy FMQ video. Couldn’t do it. A few years later, I bought this book from Christa Quilts, 99 Machine-Quilting Designs. Wasn’t much help.

But on this attempt, I actually READ the book! And watched a lot of YouTube videos. Checked out a bunch of blogs. Almost every site recommended a supreme slider for the extension table. They also almost unanimously said that FMQ is not perfect. There will be flaws but it doesn’t matter!

I ordered the supreme slider and practiced on numerous test quilt sandwiches.

I started out quilting with straight lines with the walking foot on the sashing pieces around each dinosaur unit. (Not stitch in the ditch, my lines were about 1/8″ from the seams) Followed that with more straight line quilting on the borders.

And then I started the Free Motion Quilting. And I did it! My FMQ is not perfect. I was surprised by how difficult it was to pull the quilt through even with the supreme slider but I finally got the hang of it. I’m not consistent on my length of stitches. But they aren’t too terribly bad. I started out with the very first FMQ design in Christa’s book “Landscape Lines”. This is very first Brachiosaurus block that I quilted.

I moved on to “Rounded Waves”, “Organic Cables”, “Basic Stipple” and “Loops”.

Basic Stipple is my favorite. It’s just like doodling! When I was in school, there was lots of doodling on my notes so this was just an extension.

I found that I am not good at angles so no boxes or squares for now.

I’m really happy with how the FQM turned out. There are some flaws but I’m not pointing them out to anyone!

Not only did I finish the quilting, the quilt is squared up and binding is made. Hoping to finish by next week!

And then I can snap some glamour shots!