I wanted to get some practice in piecing (it needed improvement on the crib/baby quilt) and I thought the quilting I did was pretty boring to the eye. So I constructed a 12” block of a cat using scraps from earlier projects.

I also wanted to practice more interesting forms of the actual quilting process. I used some stitches that are pre-installed on my Singer Quantum Stylist 9960. That’s what you see in the second picture below. I have 600 different installed stitches on my machine so I’m sure I can find some nifty quilting stitching to embellish my quilts.

Next I’ll be practicing free-motion quilting (definition here). Angela Walters seems to be a leading instructor/practitioner of free-motion quilting and she has excellent books and video tutorials on the subject. She might have coined the phrase “practice makes progress” and I like that very much.