Improve your Free-Motion Quilting in just ONE MONTH!
Apr 29th 2022
Let’s face it, Free-Motion Quilting can be quite challenging. It takes patience and lots of practice. But what if I told you there is an easy way to add daily practice into your life, no sewing machine required?
Last Fall, we released a new title with Dara Tomasson and Amy Colleen Robertson called Doodle School: A Daily Design Challenge to Up Your Free-Motion Quilting Game. This book set up a daily practice of drawing out quilt designs that would build upon one another so that by the end of the month you have added over a hundred designs up your sleeves.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: whoever once said that doodling quilt designs teaches muscle memory for free-motion quilting has clearly never lived in my mind and body! Well, have no fear, my dear, because that is simply NOT the point.
Enter, Doodle School’s most doodle-worthy companion: The Doodle Notebook for Free-Motion Quilting: 150+ Inspirational Motifs. At a 6”x9” this book is small enough to slip into your purse for easy on the go practice. Day 1 starts with lines and each day thereafter adds onto the motif you learned the day before. With blank boxes in varying sizes, you can practice starting a design in various places at various sizes. Start horizontally, start vertically, start diagonally, go the other way, now try it in a big box on a bigger scale, start in the middle and work your way out. By day 2 you’ll have lines down pat and can start practicing circles in a similar way. Then you can practice doing circles in lines. Pretty soon, your circles will turn to swirls, lines of swirls, swirls within circles etc. Learning motif’s in such a logical progression allows you to better understand how quilt designs are made, how they work within another design and how you will need to migrate your design motif within the limited confines of a certain space starting from a certain point - and that my dears, is FAR more useful than muscle memory!
Don’t believe me? Well, believe my mom! I gave her the Doodle Notebook for her birthday. She is not at all biased toward anything gifted to her by her favorite daughter who works for her favorite craft-book publisher. But even if she were, her results speak for themselves.
A retiree, she took this book along on trips, to various doctors appointments, in the car-line when she so graciously picks up her favorite granddaughter (don’t worry, we are her only daughter and granddaughter). Pretty soon, she was able to transfer the spacial awareness of these motif’s into a real project. “I loved that while the notebook guided me through various designs and motifs, it gave me inspiration to mix various designs within each other and build on what I learned. Then I was able to practice what I created without the fear of trying it out on a real project first.”
Friends, if I had asked my mother to share a close up of her quilting a few months ago on a very public blog - well, let’s just say, it would not have happened. Look at her now! The consistency, the artistry, the FEATHERS! Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen feathers quite so consistent by someone who only considers herself a hobbyist.
Want to learn more? Check out this blog post from one of the authors, Amy Robertson: How to Get the Most Out of the 31 Day Free-Motion Challenge.
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This blog post is written by Betsy Friedrich, Administrative Assistant.
Authors note: this blog post has not a single bit of bias…WAY TO GO MOM!!!!!
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