Sewing stuff - and a question

So, here's what I did today - I made most of a block for Amy as a replacement birthday block (we had some dropout swappers, so everyone kind of pitched in to do their part - it was lovely to see - anyway, this is my share of the make-up blocks). I would have finished this block, but I had to do the QST units 3 times - see, the pattern was originally an 18" block and Amy wanted 9", so I figured I'd just scale it down while working - this worked fine, except for the QST units, which I managed to do wrong - twice. Anyway, they are right now, and there's only a little more joining to do, and hopefully the block will be the right size in the end. Above the red & white star, you can see the pieces to Peggy's birthday block lurking - they also will hopefully get put together tomorrow.


I have actually just launched a new round of the birthday block swap over on the quilting forum on about.com, so if you are interested in joining, come read all about it - it's filling up quickly, though. You have to be a member of the forum to play along, but membership is free and easy to set up. And you have to have swapped before somewhere - not necessarily with me...


I also finished (but for the label which I am about to attach when I finish this and collect Sarah & her friend from Guides) the little spring Four Seasons replacement quilt. I really like the way this came out - possibly even more than the first one I made for the swap - which perhaps just goes to show that I tend to think too much! I'll definitely be making another one of these blocks into a mini-quilt for myself, though not right away.


And here's the question for you all - Jovita was asking me about free motion quilting - she would like to learn a bit more, get some more experience, hear about good techniques, etc, but as she lives in Lithuania, her access to classes and workshops on the topic is pretty well limited - anyway, she wondered if I could recommend a particular DVD or book - there are tons out there, so it's hard to know which to pick. Personally, my knowledge of FMQ comes from learning to use a longarm machine (which I was taught in person), combined with loads of conversations, both IRL and online about the subject, and then lots of practice, so I wasn't able to help very much - but I know a lot of you probably can recommend books or DVDs on the topic, or conversely, say which ones were less helpful - more specialist, or whatever. Anyone have any tips for Jovi?


Finally, I thought these would be fun to share - these are the three quilts I added to for the Spring Fling Round Robin - the fourth quilt I will work on will be the one I quilt & bind - I showed it the other day, it's brown and blue - I haven't worked on it yet, though, so I'm not including it here.



On the left is the centre I made - the four small rose baskets in the middle - the black border out to the four larger roses is the second border, and then the third border goes out from there.

In the centre is the piece I added a first border to - the butterfly on the gold background was what I received; I added an offset purple border with orange curved flying geese; the third person added the flowers in the yellow/gold background.

And on the right is the piece I added a second border to - the centre is the square in a square in a square in pink and brown, the second border is the chequerboard and I added the pink border with applique vines and leaves. Actually, that quilt has already been finished - you can see Anne's work on it here, on her blog.