December FMQ Challenge

Finished my December Challenge piece yesterday.  This month's tutorial was presented by Patsy Thompson and featured a variety of border design possibilities.  She pointed out the advantages of alternating curving border designs featuring a lot of movement with borders containing a more or less linear or static motif.  I loved the feathered border she showed us in her video presentation, and found that quilting feathers toward myself with no stitched spine was indeed challenging.  I also tried a bit of hyperquilting with some Sulky metallic thread.   The metallic thread behaved fairly well as long as it didn't cross too many previously stitched areas, which tended to cause the thread to shred.  Most of the piece was quilted with Aurifil 50 wt. in both top and bobbin.  The red holly berries were a 28 wt. Aurifil which required some major tension adjustment as well as switching needles several times and even the largest quilting needle I used did not produce a perfect tension.

This was one of my favorite tutorials of the year-long challenge!  A big "Thank You!" to Patsy Thompson for providing us with so much inspiration, and to SewCalGal for making possible this fantastic array of quilting experts from whom we have learned so much over the course of this year.

Here then are several photos of my piece.  I plan to fill in some of the background areas when time permits.  My challenge piece for September can be found in the central square.  This little 30 inch square quilt was assembled from the few solid fabrics I had on hand, and the color combination was a bit odd and difficult to photograph what with our dark rainy days.  A few close-ups:

The back before binding:

 

 Happy Holidays!