Free motion quilting & Potholders galore!

I seriously think I may have been crazy when I started making all these potholders.  Here is the completed pile so far:

As you can see by the pile, I have some new potholders - cute squares (a post about the red/green/yellow ones here)!  I received some Parisville fabric in a recent swap I was in as a goodie, however, my partner has pets so I couldn't use the fabric in anything I was going to keep (I'm overly allergic).  So, I had the idea to do more potholders, this time trying something else new - free motion.   I saw this fab tutorial at Oh, Fransson! for a cute dogwood pattern.

I should mention that I am a newbie at going free motion - never attempted it successfully on my own little machine.  I did some work on a long-arm, but it's way easier.  That experience helped me to better complete these potholders, but Elizabeth's tutorial was so easy, I couldn't believe how well they turned out.

I was going to take progress photos, but with my worry about how these were going to turn out and my Christmas rush, it didn't happen.  I used my hera marker to make my gridlines, instead of a water-soluble pencil (as in the tutorial) and as I commented in the tutorial, I didn't not go bottom-up when sewing (my sewing machine manual strongly advises against this).  I chose different thread colors dependent on the fabric used.

These potholders way exceeded my expectations and I'm just thrilled with the result.  The black binding it perfect and I think the quilting pattern looks amazing (especially since I was still learning).

I made a little loop on the back (I always want a pratical loop that can actually be used) and I machine stitched on the binding to the back - another new skill.  After the first potholder, I really got a better knack for machine sewing the binding.  I've read several tutorials and they helped (I think one from RPQ and others too).  I'm not going to lie though, as much as this method saves on time, I still like the look of hand sewn bindings.  However, I figured machine sewn might help these potholders stand up from use in the kitchen.