Originally Posted by Jerseyrayne
You did a beautiful job all the way around, colors, fmq, all of it. I am just getting into the fmq did you mark any of it, or just went freehand and did you plan out the whole design before you started to quilt it or a section at a time?
Thanks for asking. :D
On something like this, I'll have at least a vague plan for the whole thing, then I'll mark some of the basic lines, ie, the center of the little brown diamonds and some guide lines for the crosshatch design in the center. I do quilt a bit of sketching first on a doodle pad to figure out what I want to do.
On this one I also marked two parallel lines in the border so that I could use them to keep the size of the swirls fairly consistent.
Next, I test out my designs on some practice scraps so that when I start on the real thing I've got the kinks worked out of how it's going to "feel" and look when I FMQ it.
The feathers on this one are totally FMQ without any marking because I used the patchwork structure to define the space they would fill.
My process varies depending on the piece I'm working on. I recently did a baby size wholecloth and marked the whole thing before I started.
Hope that answers some of your questions.
Wendy