Zen Free Motion Quilting

I really wanted to do some fun free motion quilting today. I didn't want to work on the projects I wanted to do, just stitch for the fun of it. Martie Rowland of Purple Hat Fabrics posted a pic of a drawn Zentangle on Google+, wondering what it would look like as a quilt. I totally felt challenged to quilt it out.

"She thought she could, so she did." That's a quote I like to think of to keep me motivated on my quilty adventure.

It was the perfect design for using a longarm ruler. The 1/4 inch space around the foot made it easy to space the ending of the line. I marked a 10" square and divided into quarters, then again diagonally. Then around and around each triangle with straight lines that start from the end of the previous line and finish the line 1/4 " away where it intersects the line from the next side. (Clear as mud? It's easier than it sounds)

The big design forms from the repetition of the triangle shapes. I had to make sure I filled them in the right order to make sure the orientation was repeated. I bet there are variations of this design that are worth exploring.

It works great and I like the resulting design. I worked the design backwards from the original drawing, so the resulting psychedelic pinwheel rotates the opposite direction. That's perfectly OK.

Once I finished filling in two triangles, I shot a video.

This certainly isn't the first time someone's been inspired to use Zentangling in quilts. In fact, there's a lot of cross-over between free motion quilting and Zentangles.

Both Pat Ferguson and Susan McNeill have books out on using the meditative drawing process to inspire quilting stitches.

Martie Rowland might not be aware of it, but she lives very close to me. It's pretty neat to think of how we can "meet" someone online whom we might not know of otherwise and find they don't live to far away. It's also pretty neat to find I have readers all over the world (Hello Australia!) and I'm looking forward to visiting with my friend Robin, who is now a real-life-friend, during the Charlotte AQS show.

And in other news, my new business cards arrived! They turned out great. So much better than what I could do on my computer with those tear apart things.

I made my hubby run over to the neighbor's house to scan the QR code and make sure it worked. He tried to tell me it pulled up a naughty site, but I didn't buy it. The code went straight to the blog. Isn't that cool? They make me feel a little big for my britches, but it's a good thing I think to stretch myself a bit and lean into my work.