Inspired Free Motion Quilting Blog Tour and Giveaway – Day 2

My friend Mandy Leins of Mandalei Quilts and Bill Volckening teamed up to write a book – Inspired Free-motion Quilting.  When Mandy reached out to me to see if I would join in the blog tour I was happy to.  I absolutely LOVED her first book Wanderlust Quilts.  Mandy and Bill have a shared love for antique and vintage quilts and they combined their knowledge of that with quilting to create this fabulous book.  Just a few pages in I knew this was more than a “how to quilt” book, but also a lesson in how to take something from history and make something new.

With this book we were asked to bring our unique skills to the table.  Mandy and Bill wanted to see how this book could inspire us in what we already do. Before I show you what I do I have to show off a quilt that Many quilted for me.  She quilted this just after she had finished writing the Inspired Free-Motion Quilting Book and you will notice that many of the designs are very inspired by the book.

I sent Mandy my “Bella Solids Sampler Quilt” to do her magic on.  And magic she did!

Each block/section of the quilt is uniquely quilt in such a gorgeous way!

And now that I’ve read Inspired Free-Motion Quilting Book I can see exactly what inspired this beautiful, unique quilting.

This solid sampler was really the perfect place to play with these vintage designs.

I have a solid large scale Ohio Star mini quilt that has been in my “to quilt” queue for quite a few years now.  I thought this would be the perfect quilt to play on.

I decided that I wanted to work in the Double Lines and Orange Peel design to the light blue triangles.  In the book it’s done on squares but I thoguht it would interpret well into triangles … really it would work in any geometric shape.

I thought about doing the Double Lines and Orange Peel with some of the other fun ideas in the book but before I went with I scanned all the patterns again.  The Diagonal Flowers pattern caught my eye and I knew I was going to use that in the corners.

Once the corners were done I tweaked it and added it to the center dark blue square as well.

And just like that the Ohio Star Block is quilted (just needs a binding now).  It was really fun to give these new designs a try and the book explains how to do them and what inspired them in such a great way.  I can’t recommend it enough.

Now that you’ve seen what the book inspired myself (and Mandy) to quilt … check out what the other group of makers on this blog hop thought of the book!

January 7: C&T Publishing, Bill Volckening January 8: Amanda Murphy, Kim Lapacek, Stephanie Palmer January 9: Lynn Harris, Teri Lucas, Debby Brown January 10: Robin Koehler, Patty Murphy, Mary Abreu January 11: Joanna Marsh, Mandy Leins

Don’t miss your chance to win! Keep reading along and follow the links to the blog posts! To win today’s eBook prize from this blog, PersimonDreams, simply leave one comment in the comments section (below), and a random drawing on Saturday, January 12th will determine the winner. When commenting, please make sure to leave a way to contact you, and/or check back tomorrow to find out who won. Thanks for reading along. Enjoy the blog tour and enjoy the book!

~|~|~|~

Update!  Winner Chosen!

Congratulations!!!!!!

Marlasays

I’ve been working on fmq for the past year. This book looks like an interesting approach to the subject!