Parker Pig and Free Motion Quilting

I finally finished my Parker Pig last night. I woke up super excited about introducing him, but unfortunately today is the rainiest of rainy days, so some gloomy bedroom shots will have to do for now while he awaits a proper photo-shoot. I really love this little guy. He is very sweet and completely chilled out. And he has a cheeky smile, like he might not be quite as sleepy as he looks.

I deviated from the pattern just a bit. I don't like using felt, so I appliquéd on his facial details using quilting cotton faced with more cotton, so no raw edges. I also fused lightweight woven interfacing to his outer ear pieces to make them stand up nicely. I'm not entirely sure the interfacing is necessary though, so I'll try without next time. Sewing in the legs and closing the bottom seam is tricksy, but I finally managed by hand-basting it first and pinning my stuffing up towards the belly to give me more room to sew.

 I washed my first (half decent looking) free-motion quilting sample yesterday, and here it is. At this point I was just doodling designs I liked the idea of. I'm most happy with the stacked leaves. I have signed up for a craftsy class with Leah Day and am just waiting for my supreme slider and quilting gloves to arrive before I tackle much more. I have my scrap vomit quilt prepared ad ready to use as a learning curve project. I'm hoping after that I'll be competent enough to quilt my do. Good Stitches quilt.

I'll be using more of this flannel to back the big scrap vomit.I love the way the stitches sink in and it makes my quilting look a lot smoother than it actually is.