WIP Wednesday #9

This week I have been busy doing some unfun sewing... and some really fun sewing.  My lovely Father in Law volunteered my skills to his neighbor who needed the edges of his new pontoon boat cover bound.  Not cool.  I spent the better part of my week putting binding on a huge stinky cover- while I am all about helping out with my sewing, this is definitely not my area of expertise.  I did a pretty good job with it though and the owner of the pontoon boat seemed pleased.  I have warned my Father in Law that I am a QUILTER not a pontoon boat sewer.   Lets just hope he refrains from volunteering me for any other undesirable sewing. 

The rest of the sewing time I had this week was devoted to quilting my baby quilt for my Mother in Law's neighbor Joe.  His daughter is expecting a son very soon and so I have been very motivated to get the quilt done for him as a surprise.  For this quilt I was really inspired after meeting Joe's wife.  She spends HOURS every day putting together puzzles.  It is her favorite hobby.  I thought about it for a while and ultimately decided that I could make my quilting look like a puzzle.  I spent days sketching and experimenting until I finally nailed down how I would do it.  This is the first FMQ design I have ever designed myself.  From all my research I couldn't find it done anywhere else.  It ended up being pretty easy and really fun.  The main trick with this quilting design is you have to be pretty good at travel stitching (stitching over your previous stitches without straying).  It is a basic all over quilting style- but does take a bit of planning and marking.  I did not mark all my lines- I used the seams in the quilt as a guide and on the first quadrant marked it into a grid, so I could keep my design straight.  I realized though that this wasn't really necessary if you stop and visually look at the row above the row you are working on.  So for the rest of the quilt I am doing it basically free hand with no marking and it is coming out fine.  I am just about 3/4 done with it now and am very excited and motivated to finish it up and give it to Joe and his wife.  I decided if I got enough interest I would do a video tutorial next week on WIP Wednesday for this design- so if you would like to learn how to do this design then please leave me a comment saying so.  Also if you aren't a Free Motion Quilter and would like me to quilt your quilt top in this or any other design then please contact me for more info as I have started a quilting service.  Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog and Happy WIP Wednesday to you all!
I am linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced by Lee