Spiraling toward the Holidays

Does it seem to you that we've been spiraling headlong into the busiest season of the year?  I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with friends and family and love!

Our November FMQ Challenge tutorial was presented by Sarah Vedeler, well known for her meticulously gorgeous quilting and embroidery designs.  Sarah provided us with templates for practicing basic spirals in a row using a grid system.  She challenged us to practice by tracing over the prepared templates and then moving on to blank templates before proceeding to our fabric.
I spent the first half of the month tracing those templates for 10-15 minutes each day, then attempted to free-hand draw them.  I won't bore you with the results of that.

Last week I decided upon a design and marked out my basic grid lines with blue washout marker.  Since the basic grid lines were a part of the design, I stitched the longest ones using the walking foot on my machine, before proceeding to the free motion quilting.

From there I spiraled my way along each of the strips, some more successfully than others.  The grids were marked at 1", 1-1/4", 1-1/2" and 2".   After filling in the grids, it was playtime, filling in the remaining areas with a variety of backgrounds.

Detail:

 Finished at last:

 A detail of the back:

 One last view:

TRAVELING STASH BOX!

Last week I won one of the Traveling Stash Boxes and a chance to choose some items from the box and replacing them with items from my own stash of quilting fabrics and books. I've added some great FMQ books and other items which you can see here.  I hope you'll leave a comment on that post and enter to win a chance to have this stash box travel to your home!  The stash box giveaways are open to U.S. residents only, due to the high shipping costs of mailing abroad. 

Thanks to Sarah Vedeler for an excellent tutorial and to SewCalGal for hosting this fabulous challenge!