Find Inspiration in Free-Motion Combinations
Posted by Christina Cameli on Oct 26th 2021
When I went on temporary furlough at the beginning of the pandemic I felt unmoored from my regular rhythms. In place of the morning rush to drop kids off at school and make it on time for my first patient at the clinic, there was a formlessness with a complete lack of urgency to it. Without deadlines my typical busy mom momentum faltered.
I am too antsy to sit still in these situations. I wanted to be useful. I wanted connection. And so I reached out through Instagram to do something I love: teach. Every morning, at 8 am I would share a live video drawing a single quilting design. I nestled myself up to a white board in my hallway and drew. Many mornings my son joined me, and after my drawing was done he showed a lego invention he had constructed.
It filled my heart to see my Instagram community popping in to my live videos on those mornings. It helped me get up and start my day as I normally would, with one eye on the clock and a need to fill. Drawing makes me calm and I hoped it would help others as well.
What I found my viewers were the most excited about were my drawings of designs with multiple motifs in them. Some viewers would ask which book that design or concept was in and I had to say "this isn't in any of my books". Yet, I thought, and the idea for my next book took shape.
Eventually new solutions to the pandemic were created and I was brought back from furlough. I could no longer make the morning drawings with regularity. But my desire to continue to explain did not fade and I began pouring my teachings out onto paper instead of video.
The book, titled Free-Motion Combinations, covers all my techniques for combining different free-motion designs into more complex compositions. From simple approaches for beginners to advanced examples for the experienced and adventurous, it is a text that aims to give curious quilters everything they need to move away from single designs and into more personal quilting that causes others to pause and marvel at the creativity and artistry before them.
To see the drawings we did together in those early months of the pandemic, you can check out the videos on my Instagram page. Sometimes in classes my students will mention these videos and how much they looked forward to them in the early, anxious days of the pandemic. I always say how they helped me just as much if not more! And that because of their being there, a new book was called forth. It truly feels like something we created together.
I am so excited to have it nearly in my hands, and in yours. A book conceived entirely in an unprecedented world. A book full of new inspiration and ideas, for you to take and inspire your own works of art. A book that showed me that especially in dark times, art is there to soothe us and calm us and connect us to each other.
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