This week is the chapter called  U Turns in the book “The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting” by Angela Walters and Christa Watson. HollyAnne, Kristin and Jen are joining me in this journey. The four of us are blogging our way through the book and each week that goes by we are practicing more and gaining confidence with each exercise. I am a long armer and the other ladies are using their domestic sewing machines. The patterns for the quilts in the book are amazing but we are focusing on the free motion quilting for the blog hop. Links to the previous weeks are on the side bar tab for the Machine Quilting Blog hop. Join the party at Instagram using hashtag #machinequiltingbloghop

This weeks big challenge is something that takes lots of practice. Corners. How to turn them is always something longarmers need to think about because you move the machine not the quilt. Several options were given, number 1 do something else in the corner such as a spiral square and the border is ribbon candy.

This block shows a continuous pattern with the greek keys in the green. Then the blue corners were a flow of ribbon loops. Then I became really adventurous… doing loops of e’s that transition to e’s and l’s around the corner. I also used wavy lines and added a sprial in the lower right. So doing corners can be really fun and the possibilities are endless on what to do when turning a corner!

This is the block from the first week. You can see a spiral in the corner and a weird square thing in the rest of the outer block. Then the rest you can see how I turned the corner in the inner rows using the flow of the stitch used. The outer border is visible with my corner with the switchbacks.

And here is my next attempt at hook swirls. It is coming along but not quite right. Time, it takes time. When I change direction my brain cannot translate the change… yet.

This morning’s hooked swirls are even better! 

Here is the video on how I quilted these blocks

Quilt on!

Vicki