Bethany Nicole Pease - Modern Quilting Designs: 90+ Free-Motion Inspirations- Add Texture & Style to Your Next Quilt

I dedicate this book to my mom, Nancy. I love you. Thank you for inspiring my passion for quilting. More important, thank you for the love and wisdom you have faithfully poured into my life from the beginning. God has given me a tremendous gift in you, Mom. I also dedicate this book to my Heavenly Father God, in whom I have found inexpressible joy and true fulfillment in life.

Special thanks to Nancy Pease, Nancy Johnson, Marylin Harlow-Maynard, Cathy McKillip, and John Adams (aka Quilt Dad).

I never understood how my mother could stand to be at her sewing machine for hours at a time contentedly stitching the afternoon away. How could she sit still for that long? Not to mention, how could she actually enjoy sewing? My boundless energy as a child drove me outside to play the day awayanything but sit still! In February 2002 when I was sixteen, my newly single mother of four decided to expand her longarm machine quilting business to include a quilt shop. By that time, I had grown up just a wee bit and could actually sit still for longer than a minute. After working in our newly opened shop for a few months, I had completed my first quilt and realized I thoroughly enjoyed quilting. My mother wasnt crazy for her love of sewing after all!

The longer we ran the quilt shop, the more addicted to quilting I became. My horizons were ever expanding. Observing my mothers skillful talent and adventurous creativity inspired me to try my hand on her longarm quilting machine. Soon I found myself standing in front of her machine, poised and ready to start free-motion quilting my first quilt. My stomach churned with mixed emotions of extreme delight and utter fear as my finger hovered over the start button, but by the time I reached the end of my twin-size quilt, I felt empowered. A few years later at age nineteen, I began quilting for customers alongside my mother. For the entire first year of my quilting career, I stitched nothing but one simple design for basic customer orders, leaving all the challenging orders to my mothers expertise. Boredom eventually overwhelmed my fear of stitching more complex designs. Feathers became one of my favorites to sew, and once I had them mastered, I was no longer afraid to try new ideas.

Today I run a thriving longarm business called Bethany Quilts. My mom and I still work together. She has been my quilting coach and best friend all along, and I cannot continue writing without saying, Thanks, Mom. She and I make a great team and often brainstorm together about new designs for challenging customer orders.

It is my goal that no matter which type of machine you quilt onlongarm or domesticyou will catch the vision. I hope you will walk away from this book equipped and inspired to see the myriad of designs that are right in front of you waiting to be discovered. I know that the more you work at it and diligently sketch your ideas, the easier it will become. As you sketch one idea, it will lead to another idea, then another and another. You will soon find yourself tumbling headlong into your own quilted world.

I love my job because the creative possibilities are endless. Everywhere I look I am inspired. Whether its the pinecone on the ground, the trim work on a building, a summer flower, ferns by the creek, the weird-looking mushroom in the backyard, the pattern on my friends shirt, the illustrations in a childrens book, random stickers at the craft store, or the symbol on the outside of a cardboard boxinspirations for quilt designs are everywhere. Taking pictures of the oddest things is a normal habit for me. I occasionally find myself fishing a cardboard box out of a dumpster, just to take a picture of a logo on it that I find interesting or creative. Pausing in the earring section of a department store to take pictures of dangly earrings is something I am often compelled to do. Regardless of peoples puzzled looks, I cannot pass up such a fantastic design inspiration just dangling there in front of me!

One new design inspires another new design in a continuous domino effect. For example, I got waylaid one day with a simple swirl design and ended up creating two different variations of the original ().

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Often, multiple designs come from a single inspiration or a combination of similar inspirational sources.

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Look at the lines in the design inspiration around you. I have stitched flames for years. Then I discovered that stitching them sideways and adding swirls creates a whole new look.

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Horizontal and vertical design lines are everywhere. After I had perfected my water-inspired design ().

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Filler designs are the foundational building blocks for machine quilting and provide an excellent backdrop to set off more complex designs, such as feathers. Not only are they a starting place for beginner quilters, but they also become a resourceful stash of complementary designs to be revisited again and again. I find I am always on the lookout for new filler designs.