Not even one day of free motion quilting

I've been watching what Leah Day is doing over at her blog, 365 days of free motion quilting fillers, and I have to say, she makes it look easy and fun. I admire what she's doing, especially coming up with a new design each day. But when it comes down to it, I suck at free motion. Maybe it's my machine, maybe it's me, or it could be the combination.  Or maybe I need waaaaay more practice. So yesterday, when I should have been studying, I started practicing on some quilt-as-you-go blocks that I've abandoned. (Could someone tell me what to do with 12 or so of these 10 inch blocks? I was going to make a full-sized quilt for my bed, but I went another direction.)

At right is my pitiful free motion quilting, with jerky, uneven stiitches and no discernible pattern. This is with my old Elna SP with a plate covering the feed dogs and a darning foot. So I uncovered the feed dogs and put on my regular foot back and impressed myself with making this vine. Yes, I have to twist the fabric and stop to turn at the point of the leaves, but the stitching is even and controlled and the vine doesn't look too bad at all, considering I did it free hand. To prove to myself that this wasn't a one-shot wonder, I did three more squares, and they're  OK too, maybe even good. So maybe me and this machine can't free motion, but we can machine quilt, even without a walking foot. Now I need to find a blog that has 365 days of machine quilting designs, but not free motion. Any takers out there?

I also made a couple of blocks for my guild's monthly challenge. Anne K. asked us to make the Jack in the Box block in blues and purples, which I did at right, using a yummy Kaffe print and some hand-dyed tone on tone white fabric that's now purple. Using this value configuration made the block too swastiska-like for my taste. The one at the left is the result of making twice as many flying geese  as I needed, using the no waste method where you start with squares. I didn't have enough fabric to make two blocks, so this is a variation of the Jack in the Box.

While I was procrastinating from doing my homework yesterday (it did get done in time for my class presentation today) I made a dozen 6.5 inch string blocks for last month's guild challenge set by Laura to add to the 63 she already has. I'm valiantly attempting to empty my string box, or at least create some room in it, although I had to use some non-strings to get a pink block. I also made two black and white selvage blocks, as well as a word selvage one to match the dotted selvage one I made before. The blocks on my header are the ones I made for Laura last month.