Our guest teacher for June was Cindy Needham, http://www.cindyneedham.com/ who is an amazing quilter/teacher/artist!!! You should check her site out!! Our task this month was to Divide and Conquer, or, do a swirl doodle and fill in the spaces with machine quilting. I decided to do kind of a free flowing, wavy sort of design and actually had first decided to do it horizontally. This is my doodling on paper. I was at first going to add letters. I may still do this for my grand-daughter :^) I first used my blue washout pens to draw the design on the fabric. Then I began to fill in each space with quilting. As you can see from the three photos above, I had the mind set of a horizontal design. But I did not like it at all, so it sat for awhile, untouched!! Then I moved it a quarter turn to a vertical view, and it was a surprise!! I liked it so much more and it was begging to be filled in. How silly when you think about it!!! So now that I liked the design, I could actually find my hummm-purrr like Cindy described. It is as though you are one with your machine gliding along at a comfortable, relaxing pace :^) More photos to show some close ups and the beautiful texture this kind of quilting makes!!! I did a little shading with a crayon. I am not so sure I really like that part, but too late, it cannot be removed!! WOW, what a great tutorial. I learned a lot and I learned tons from all the other members of our challenge group. I just love the sharing that is going on!! Thanks to Cindy Needham for such a wonderful lesson and to SewCalGal, http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/ for hosting this year long challenge. The education and experience is priceless!! Take care everyone, Happy Quilting, and keep those needles sharp!! Martha