Free Motion Quilting

I've spent the past few days discovering the art of free motion quilting. I love my little Brother Innovis 900D sewing machine. I've had it for almost 2 years now and have yet to fully explore all its capabilities. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that. I purchased it because I wanted the free motion quilting capability along with a bit of embroidery and of course, all the basics to boot. She's certainly not a Husqvarna Viking (I drool over those machines like a dog drools for bacon), but she had all the features I was looking for. Above you can see my first attempts at using the free motion quilting utility. If you look close enough, you can see all the ripple-like stitch through the blocks; that's all done on the fly. No pattern, no lines, just your imagination. I kind of dove into it with the piece on the left, not knowing how it would turn out. It's trickier than you would think as you have to coordinate eyes, muscle memory, concentration, stitch speed, and patience. But the outcome was well worth the time spent learning. I'm going to try to spend a little bit of time each day improving on this technique. I was amazed how many resources are out there, including videos. For those interested, I found this website which not only describes 300+ patterns, but gives you a video tutorial as well. My hat's off to this girl for all the time it must have taken to create these. The above objects are meant to be scarves, with one of them made as a Christmas present for 'someone'. I can't mention names yet, because they just might see this blog post before then.

The baby buns are doing well and growing fast. They no longer bury themselves in their nest, but wander about, snuggling up to mamma buns when sleep overcomes their curiosity. As far as I can tell, all their eyes are open now. I try to handle them a little bit each day, hoping that this will get them ready for the trip they are about to make up north tomorrow. I suppose it's not ideal to move them around, but I can't leave them alone for a week, so they are coming with. We rarely travel with the farm. Note to self: plan breedings away from travel dates. Live and learn. For now, I still have loads to get done in preparation for the trip tomorrow. I think it's going to be a late night.