I've got a question for you today :

I know the answer isn't the same for everyone, but most quilters I talk to say they are best at piecing. Unfortunately this often leads to a lot of pieced quilt tops, but not many finished quilts because in order for a quilt to be finished, it has to be quilted.

I've been hearing about this problem for years, but I never experienced this issue myself because from the very beginning I forced myself to build skills: piecing, applique, and free motion quilting, at the same time.

Lately I began wondering if building skills equally worked for me, couldn't this also work for you? With proper planning and design, couldn't we master interesting piecing techniques AND free motion quilting basics all at once?

For the past several months I've been working on the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern, a huge, highly detailed pattern that teaches not just piecing techniques, but also how to quilt all the blocks and learn many skill building free motion quilting designs.

This quilt pattern comes with all full size templates and quilting designs, making it over 90 pages worth of excellent, skill building information for you to enjoy!

After designing the blocks and writing the pattern, I realized I really wanted videos too, so this coming year in 2014, we're going to learn how to piece and then free motion quilt all 42 blocks from this pattern!

These new videos will be posted to the Free Motion Quilting Project as part of the Building Blocks Quilt Along. Everyone in the world is invited to join in the fun and work on building skills for piecing and free motion quilting at the same time.

So get a head start on our upcoming project! Download the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern, pull out some fabric, and get prepped and ready to go because this is going to be one skill building quilt you don't want to miss!

Now let's catch up with the latest news from the Free Motion Quilting Project.

78. Garden Maze #419 - Learn how to quilt this super geometric design inspired by labyrinth hedge mazes. I've always wanted to visit a hedge maze, but they're not very popular in my area so I guess I'll have to be satisfied with quilting designs inspired by them instead.

Josh's Quilting Tip #7 - Josh has been practicing free motion quilting and is having mixed results, mostly because he insisted on quilting on weirdly shaped scraps of fabric rather than piecing them into squares. I'm trying hard not to tell him "I told you so!"

Find all of these articles plus hundreds more right here on the Free Motion Quilting Project.

So that's it for this week! I'm hopping back on the sewing machine to film new videos for next year. In addition to the Building Blocks Quilt Along, we will be learning new designs each week. My goal is to reach design #500 sometime in 2014!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day