Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting Blog Tour + Giveaway

 

Hi everyone! I'm excited to take my turn on the blog tour for Natalia's new book, Beginner's Guide to Free Motion Quilting. Natalia is a very talented quilter who blogs at Piece N Quilt where she shares a lot of her quilting along with tutorials and patterns too.

Natalia's theme for this blog tour is "It's a Family Affair" and I'd like to share a bit about my family's influence on my sewing and quilting. My mom learned to sew from her grandma, and she taught me to sew clothes and toys starting when I was really little. My Grandma Taylor also taught me and helped me with my sewing, including helping me make my very first quilt when I was 13 years old.

I started quilting 'for real" the year I got married and now my husband and I have been married 15 years and have 3 kids. I've enjoyed making baby quilts for my kids and nieces and nephews and bigger quilts for family members as well. My mom started quilting a few years ago and my kids have done some sewing too. My oldest boy is working on a Minecraft pillow, and just the other day, my nearly 4-year-old daughter started her first hand sewing project. She still needs a lot of help but she's doing a really good job so far!

Now for my thoughts on the book. I think Natalia did a fantastic job with this book. Beginner's Guide to Free Motion Quilting has a good introductory section explaining the tools you need to get started with machine quilting and basic instructions for basting your quilt. Then the main part of the book is full of various free motion quilting designs, complete with step-by-step diagrams and photos showing how to stitch each design. I'm looking forward to working some more on my free motion quilted feathers with this book as my guide.

I did try something new with my quilting after reading Natalia's book. In the center of this photo you can see the quilting I did based on the "clams" design. (This is the back of a quilt I'll be sharing here soon.) I had tried to do something similar to this after just seeing a couple of photos and couldn't figure it out. The diagrams in the book really helped me get it, and I even made my own variations/additions to the design in a few places.

Finally, I have to mention the project section of the book; Natalia has included the patterns and quilting suggestions for 6 quilts. The cool part about this for me is... I helped make one of the quilts in the book. :)

Natalia does a lot of applique in her quilt designs and I helped make this applique quilt top. (I would have made the whole quilt top but my sewing machine ended up needing to be serviced half way through the project.) I love the quilting Natalia did and someday soon I'm going to try out that swirly quilting she did in the negative space.

All right, time for the giveaway. If you'd like to win a copy of Beginner's Guide to Free Motion Quilting, just leave a comment on this blog post. I'd love to hear about a current project you're working on... or tell me something you want to make. If the winner is not a U.S. resident, they will receive the e-book version of the book. Winners will be chosen on October 18.


Check out the other stops on the tour!

Amy Webb - October 6th
Melissa Corry - October 7th
Melissa Mortensen  - October 8th
Stash Books - October 9th
Amy Ellis - October 10th
Kimberly Jolly - October 11th
Vicki Christensen - October 12th
Candy Glendening - October 13th
Angela Yosten - October 14th
Gen Q Magazine - October 15th
Tracey Jacobsen - October 16th
Vickie Eapen - October 17th

Allison Harris – October 18th