Free Motion Challenge - The final day

It's my final day of the Free motion challenge. I can honestly say, that I'm a far better machine quilter for doing the challenge. Many thanks to Joanne and Wendy for hosting this challenge. The challenge is over, but the machine quilting is not. I have a few practices pieces to finish up, then bind. I'll show you them when I'm done. Next I need to sew some things so that I can machine quilt them...

Anyway, I couldn't wait to try my variegated Aurafil threads that I came home with on Friday. So since this is the last day of my Free Motion challenge, I thought I'd try out my new threads. I did learn a bit while testing them out.

This first picture, I'm using a 28/2 wt Mako variegated thread. It is beautiful to sew with and because the thread is a heavier weight than I'm used to it shows up so nice. Even the parts of the thread that are the same color as the background fabric. What I don't think I would do with this thread, is use it when I had to go over my stitches as you would do in pebbles. The heavy thread would make the pebbling look too thready. Here I am trying to combine a few simple free motion patterns to get an all over free motion fill. This actually stressed me out because I got trapped in a corner once.

In this photo, I'm using the Mako 40/2 cotton variegated thread. I really like it as well, and you can see I slipped for a moment and did a feather. But I did it so I could try some bananas around it, which are a more dense filler. This thread is also very nice and noticably lighter than the 28 weight. A good weight for the smaller fillers.

It was a good exercise for me to try the different weight threads. Early on in the challenge I learned that I would probably not enjoy doing free motion with 60 wt thread because of the breakage. It looks like 40 wt, and 28 wt are my comfort zone.

It's been a great challenge girls. Once again, many thanks for hosting.