Modern Quilting Designs: 90+ Free-Motion Inspirations- Add Texture & Style to Your Next Quilt

116 Pages·2012·26.89 MB·English

by  Bethany Nicole Pease

Dedication
I dedicate this book to my mom, Nancy. I love you. Thank you for inspiring my
passion for quilting. More important, thank you for the love and wisdom you
have faithfully poured into my life from the beginning. God has given me a
tremendous gift in you, Mom. I also dedicate this book to my Heavenly Father
God, in whom I have found inexpressible joy and true fulfillment in life.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Nancy Pease, Nancy Johnson, Marylin Harlow-Maynard,
Cathy McKillip, and John Adams (aka Quilt Dad).
INTRODUCTION
I never understood how my mother could stand to be at her sewing machine for
hours at a time contentedly stitching the afternoon away. How could she sit still
for that long? Not to mention, how could she actually enjoy sewing? My
boundless energy as a child drove me outside to play the day away—anything
but sit still! In February 2002 when I was sixteen, my newly single mother of
four decided to expand her longarm machine quilting business to include a quilt
shop. By that time, I had grown up just a wee bit and could actually sit still for
longer than a minute. After working in our newly opened shop for a few months,
I had completed my first quilt and realized I thoroughly enjoyed quilting. My
mother wasn’t crazy for her love of sewing after all!
The longer we ran the quilt shop, the more addicted to quilting I became. My
horizons were ever expanding. Observing my mother’s skillful talent and
adventurous creativity inspired me to try my hand on her longarm quilting
machine. Soon I found myself standing in front of her machine, poised and ready
to start free-motion quilting my first quilt. My stomach churned with mixed
emotions of extreme delight and utter fear as my finger hovered over the start
button, but by the time I reached the end of my twin-size quilt, I felt empowered.
A few years later at age nineteen, I began quilting for customers alongside my
mother. For the entire first year of my quilting career, I stitched nothing but one
simple design for basic customer orders, leaving all the challenging orders to my
mother’s expertise. Boredom eventually overwhelmed my fear of stitching more
complex designs. Feathers became one of my favorites to sew, and once I had
them mastered, I was no longer afraid to try new ideas.
Today I run a thriving longarm business called Bethany Quilts. My mom and I
still work together. She has been my quilting coach and best friend all along, and
I cannot continue writing without saying, “Thanks, Mom.” She and I make a
great team and often brainstorm together about new designs for challenging
customer orders.

It is my goal that no matter which type of machine you quilt on—longarm or
domestic—you will catch the vision. I hope you will walk away from this book
equipped and inspired to see the myriad of designs that are right in front of you
waiting to be discovered. I know that the more you work at it and diligently
sketch your ideas, the easier it will become. As you sketch one idea, it will lead
to another idea, then another and another. You will soon find yourself tumbling
headlong into your own quilted world.
Everywhere I look I am inspired.
I love my job because the creative possibilities are endless. Everywhere I look I
am inspired. Whether it’s the pinecone on the ground, the trim work on a
building, a summer flower, ferns by the creek, the weird-looking mushroom in
the backyard, the pattern on my friend’s shirt, the illustrations in a children’s
book, random stickers at the craft store, or the symbol on the outside of a
cardboard box—inspirations for quilt designs are everywhere. Taking pictures of
the oddest things is a normal habit for me. I occasionally find myself fishing a
cardboard box out of a dumpster, just to take a picture of a logo on it that I find
interesting or creative. Pausing in the earring section of a department store to
take pictures of dangly earrings is something I am often compelled to do.
Regardless of people’s puzzled looks, I cannot pass up such a fantastic design
inspiration just dangling there in front of me!
One new design inspires another new design in a continuous domino effect. For example, I got waylaid one
day with a simple swirl design and ended up creating two different variations of the original (Figures 1, 2,
and 3).
Figure 1
Figure 2