Organic Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book

By Amanda Murphy

Let Mother Nature inspire your quilting with this guide full of inspiring ideas, techniques, and tips from the acclaimed fabric and quilt designer.

Following the success of her Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book and Rulerwork Quilting Idea Book, Amanda Murphy shares an all-new volume packed with exciting designs. This handy guide provides more than one hundred original ideas inspired by the elements around you—water, air, feathers, ferns, leaves, sticks, stones, flowers, and fire.

Amanda’s step-by-step instructions will help you gain confidence in your free-motion work. Then she offers a myriad of ideas organized by element and design type for you to you branch out and get creative. With Organic Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book, you can add texture, movement, and a sense of the natural world to your quilting, whether you're sewing on a domestic sewing machine or a longarm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781617458262

Amanda Murphy

Amanda Murphy is a translator and an associate professor of English and translation studies at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

WHY ORGANICS?

A show-stopping quilt is a study in contrasts.

When you quilt you are, in essence, creating a texture. The contrast between geometric quilted lines and wavy fills is what takes a piece from ordinary to extraordinary. Not only does that textural contrast direct your attention, bringing some areas of the quilt top forward while others recede—it can actually fool the eye, making you wonder how someone even pieced something that spectacular.

Photo by Amanda Murphy

Detail of Diamond Jubilee by Amanda Murphy—a contrast in texture

In the first volume of this series, Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book, we broke down basic fills and their variations so that you would have a variety of designs from which to choose for the different areas of your quilt top.

The second volume, Rulerwork Quilting Idea Book, focused on the many ways to break down areas of a quilt using common quilting rulers, which allow you to quilt geometric shapes with ease—all while letting you avoid rotating the quilt!

Now that we have covered many basic designs, this volume focuses on more free-motion possibilities to fill those spaces.

There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to free-motion, and many are inspired by nature. When I teach, I find that many people struggling with quilting feel more comfortable quilting leaves than any other motif. In nature, every leaf is unique. We are used to seeing variation in the natural world as beautiful. Those organic, irregular shapes lend themselves to free-motion.

Embroidery machines can stitch perfect, symmetrical designs. But with free-motion, that isn’t our goal; instead, we should value the evidence of a human hand in the process, with all the unique asymmetry and irregularities it can produce. A human can fill in quirky spaces or adapt designs on the fly much better than any machine. One hundred years down the road, people may assign special value to quilts that are machine quilted by a person, despite any imperfections, just as we do for hand-quilted pieces.

Photo by Amanda Murphy

Detail of Ocean Waves by Amanda Murphy, quilted on my Free-Motion Fantasy fabric line

I’ve organized this book by Family (water, air, leaves, and so on) but also by Element (allover pattern, block, border, and so on). As with my previous books, I have provided a visual index section for easy reference—this time, there are two indexes: Index of Designs by Family and Index of Designs by Element!

Are you ready to take your repertoire of quilting designs to the next level?

Let’s begin. …

Good Measure Quilting Rulers

Have you heard about my new Good Measure quilting rulers for Brewer Sewing? They feature clear markings, some in different thicknesses, and have a special nonslip backing, so there is no need for tape! The basic sets can be used in tandem with the Rulerwork Quilting Idea Book! The designs they produce contrast beautifully with the free-motion designs in this book and in the Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book. (Find the rulers under Shop on my website, or in your local quilt shop.)

Good Measure Every Circle, Every Curve, and Every Wave quilting rulers by Amanda Murphy, and the Rulerwork Quilting Idea Book

BASICS

QUILTING ON A DOMESTIC MACHINE

Machine

Choose a machine with free-motion capabilities and excellent stitch quality. I’ve quilted on both my BERNINA 5 and 7 Series for years and highly recommend them. A bigger throat space is advantageous, particularly for larger quilts, but it is not completely necessary for free-motion quilting in general.

Lower the feed dogs on the machine. I do not change the stitch length down on my BERNINAs, but I know there are some machines out there that quilt better if you do this.

BERNINA 790 Plus

Free-Motion Feet, Needles, and Thread

There are many free-motion feet on the market. My favorite is the BERNINA Freehand Embroidery Foot #24 because of the fantastic visibility it affords.

BERNINA also makes a stitch regulator foot for its machines, which can be a great help when trying out new designs. It keeps your stitches the same length, regardless of how fast you are moving your hands.

BERNINA Freehand Embroidery Foot #24

Photos by BERNINA International

BERNINA Stitch Regulator (BSR)

There are also fun free-motion specialty feet, such as the BERNINA Free-Motion Couching Foot #43!

Photo by BERNINA International

BERNINA Free-Motion Couching Foot #43

A side note: I actually do a lot of my free-motion quilting with my BERNINA Adjustable Ruler Foot #72 so that I can easily switch to rulerwork and then back again.

To find out which feet your specific machine can accommodate, ask your dealer.

I usually choose size 80/12 or 90/14 topstitch needles. Aurifil 40- and 50-weight threads are my favorite threads.

Photo by BERNINA International

BERNINA Adjustable Ruler Foot #72

Accessories

Sewing cabinets, in which the machine sits so that its bed is flat to the cabinet’s top surface, are ideal. If that isn’t a possibility, Sew Steady makes quilting tables for many machines that provide you with an extended flat quilting area.

Large Acrylic Table (by Sew Steady)

To make moving your quilt sandwich easier, I highly recommend the Free Motion Glider (by Sew Steady) or the Supreme Slider