Book Review: Free-Motion Quilting

After looking through books on free-motion quilting, I decided on Angela Walters’ book: Free-Motion Quilting.

I’m not new to sewing or to sewing quilts. I usually stitch in the ditch or do some straight stitching next to the seams, outline stitching. I’ve always  loved the look of free-motion quilting. I’ve never actually tried it and wanted to.  But I’m the kind of gal that likes to research things and find out all I can about it before trying.

There’s a lot of information on the internet, but not of all of it helpful…. And I like books. You can hold books in your hand, read them in bed or sitting on the back porch, and you can take them with you, to read while waiting in the car for the kids to get out of school. The internet just seems to make me lazy–or maybe it’s that I am easily distracted and a quick minute turns into hours lost, lost looking at all the pretty things other people are sewing.

Anyway, having no free-motion quilting experience, I looked into a bunch of different  books and thought this one would be good to own. I was right. The book is organized in a logical way, so I found it easy to use right away. It shows you the starting and stopping points to several designs, which I found extremely helpful.

I had it sitting on my lap while I tried some of the various designs.

Here are my wonky pebbles. They are sad pebbles.

The first design in the book  is  the swirls. I will say this: I think the swirls are not the easiest to start with. But then again, it seems this book is intended for those who have some experience with free-motion, which I did not. [But after over a month of practicing, I think my swirls are getting better.]

Though Angela does not include how to do stippling, I did try some stippling and thought it was a bit easier. It’s also called meandering–I think I like the idea of meandering along a quilt. It adds a lot of texture.

Lots of practicing going on. This yellow scrap was supposed to be the flower design. I found the flower designs  easier than the swirls.

Though they need more practice, too.

Just messing around.

I played around with free-motion quilting for entire days. I really like doing it. (though I didn’t make anything, so I don’t have much to show for it, haha–just a bunch of quilted scraps)

This book has a lot of really creative designs and ideas for enhancing your quilt. Each design has clear instructions to help the novice recreate them on his or her own quilt. I loved how Angela encourages one to be creative and not follow rigid rules. I sketched out a design and gave it a try on an actual project

I made this piano key cover using some vintage Laura Ashley from the 70’s. My mom gave me her stash and this Laura Ashley was one she had used for my sister’s room when we were little. I tried my sketched design on it. It was good to practice on a larger project, since it is a lot harder to free motion quilt a large project as opposed to the little scraps I had been working on.

It explains some of the tools needed, but it doesn’t give you all that you would need to know to do free-motion quilting. She also does not give you a step by step diagram for stippling, which I really want to do. So it isn’t the only book you’ll need if free-motion quilting  is new to you, and especially if quilting is completely new to you.

It’s more of a how to do different designs using the free-motion technique for those who know the basics already. Angela does a great job at helping you to see the possibilities of enhancing a quilt through free-motion quilting. And there are a lot of different design ideas included.  She makes it easy to understand and gives great examples of how to use the different designs on modern quilts.  I feel the designs and diagrams on how to recreate them makes it well worth the price.

Overall the book is very well written and inspiring. I’m glad to have added it to my sewing book collection!  After working for a few weeks, I used free-motion quilting on the Mug Rugs I made this Christmas. It was great practice. I did a stippling design on this one.

I added swirls on this one.

I definitely need more practice. Angela’s book is great tool for learning the different free-motion quilting designs, as well as how to use them on modern quilts.