long arm quilting with natalia bonner

a handful of months ago, it was mentioned at one of our quilt guild meetings that a professional quilter would be offering classes at meissners in september.  i jumped online when i got home and registered myself for two out of the three classes being offered.

to be honest i knew nothing about Natalia Bonner at all, but i was excited for the opportunity to take some classes from a different instructor.  plus, every time i have gone in to use the long arm, i have steered myself away from thinking about free motion, and just stuck with pantographs.  the two classes i took were called "beginner's guide to free motion quilting" and "creative background fillers."  i opted out of taking "visual guide to machine quilting feathers" because i didn't feel like feathers were something that would interest me (since then, i've signed up for Angelina's feathers & swirls class in december)

i feel like with these classes i learned a good handful of things, but overall i feel a lot more confident in my free motion quilting.  when i took my initial certification class nearly a year ago, i felt very overwhelmed and put crazy expectations on myself.  plus, i was paired with someone who used to own her own long arm.  talk about intense!  now, almost a year later, i feel like i have a better grasp on the concepts of it, and enjoy it WAY more than when i did it on my home machine.  currently, i have one quilt that i do plan to free motion, just have to figure out what design will work best!

here's a look at some of my practice chunks, forever immortalized in blog format :)
day 1: beginner's guide to free motion quilting
day 2: creative background fillers
there are a few motifs that i'm excited to use from these classes.
i particularly like the wood grain from the first day, and i think that would look great on a baby boy quilt of sorts.  i really like the dense all over squares (did them both days) as well as the crackle looking one.  i think the crackle will look great on my pumpkin quilt, so hopefully i can get a move on that to make it happen!  surprisingly i didn't hate doing the swirls as much as i thought i would, and it was great to have angelina there to hang out with on the second day of classes!  i'm ready to get long arm quilting again, and will very likely be trying a free motion style when i am working on one of my projects :)