Now how do I quilt my small quilts?

 Before I start this post, I want you to know that I'm not an experienced machine quilter.  I enjoy it and love to do it on smaller quilts. Remember, this is just how I do it.  Anything that's too big goes off to a long arm machine quilter. 

 This quilt is Social Climber, the latest one that our Simple Whatnots Club did.  

In a lot of the quilts that I've quilted, I let the piecing of the blocks be my guide.  When I quilted Social Climber (above), I just did straight lines on the nine patches.  The squares in the nine patches are 1'" so straight lines seem to work best for me.  That is an easy way to do nine patches or anything with squares where you can mark a straight line (the longer, the better) and just sew across the quilt.  

This quilt from the Simple Whatnots club is Box of Chocolates.  I used a chalk marker that you can find on Amazon to mark the lines.   The straight sewing is pretty easy with just squares.  

This is the small Strawberry Table Mat that I did the tutorial for in this blog post.    You can see that I did a swoopy thing in each block.  I did that because I think it's harder to quilt straight lines when you've got half square triangles in a quilt.  

So here is how I quilted the Strawberry mat and the basket blocks in Social Climber.  (Thanks to my husband for drawing the graphic.)  If  you start at number 1 and follow the numbers, you will eventually end up at the top right hand corner and will finish quilting across the top and end up back at number 1.   This is what I call the Swoopy Design.  

The quilt below is Star Drift.  That's the first quilt I did from the Simple Whatnots club.  I did some swooping and straight lines on this one.  

This table runner, Out for A Spin,  is our project for next month.  

Here's what I really like to quilt.  If you Google Angela Walters Paisley and watch her video or any of her quilting videos, she really makes you feel like you can do it.  I go to the dollar store and get a sketch pad for $1.  Well, I guess it's $1.25 now, and I get a marker.  Then I watch her video and  try and draw what I've seen in the video on the sketch pad.  I start in the corner of the page and draw what  I've seen and try and work my way across the page filling it with the design and then try and get the whole page covered.  Like I said before:  I'm not good, but I really enjoy it.  

Our Simple Whatnots leader, Nancy, draws up a design each month for a charity block so if we want to make a few to donate to her, we can.  Then she makes them into tops and quilts them to donate to different charities.   I have some  a lot of Lori Holt fabric so I used some to make the rail fence blocks.  

This month's charity block is a half log cabin.  Here's what I've made so far.  

I've been doing some embroidery,  and of course I'm always gluing hexagons.  I don't really have much else to show right now.  Doing the little quilts and making the charity blocks is keeping me busy for the most part.  

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.  

I hope you're finding time to stitch today!!