Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting: 50+ Visual Tutorials to Get You Started Professional-Quality Results on Your Home Machine [Paperback]

Natalia Bonner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2012

Photo tutorials show stitching in action for 50+ free-motion quilting designs to create modern quilts with classic style! Popular blogger and designer, Natalia Bonner, illustrates her instructions with detailed photos that make it easier to get beautiful results on your home sewing machine. Learn how to quilt all-over, as filler, on borders, and on individual blocks…using loops and swirls, feathers and flames, flowers and vines, pebbles and more! Includes tips for choosing batting and thread, layering and basting, starting and stopping, and prepping your machine are included. After you’ve practiced, show off your new skills with six geometric quilt projects.

Editorial Reviews

Review

You’re expecting your first child and you’re just a little tired of working for that dentist, so what do you do? Well, if you’re Natalia, you buy a longarm quilt machine and start a business.

This step five years ago – and the 20 years of quiltmaking before that – are what brings Natalia to our shelves. In Beginner’s Guide, she covers all of the basics for successful free-motion quilting on your home machine. What we like is how she incorporates traditional quilt motifs – feathers and leaves – with hip designs like Triple Circles, Wood Grain and Cobblestones to highlight the simplicity of her quilts. Oh, and did we mention that she gives us six modern quilt projects as well?

The pictures are clear and pretty and her workmanship is beautiful. What we really like is that it’s a blend of quilt pattern line drawings and of photos, illustrations and projects. If you’re wanting rich quilting help, buy this book, now!

--Generation Q Magazine; 11/15/12



Author Natalia Bonner takes the mystery out of free-motion quilting and shows you, step by step and illustrated with detailed photos, how to get beautiful results on your home sewing machine. Learn to quilt all-over, as background filler, and on individual blocks, plus get tips for layering and basting, starting and stopping, and prepping your machine.
--Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting; Dec/Jan 13 Issue



Natalia's quilting designs are fresh and inviting and fit right in with both Modern and traditional quilts. Her 50 step-by-step tutorials are well photographed and easy to follow, and six Modern quilt projects that include piecing/applique patterns as well as quilting instructions are included. Tips for accomplishing all of this on your home machine are also featured.
--Machine Quilting Unlimited; January/February 2013



With dozens of photos, Natalia Bonner takes you through the steps of free-motion quilting, beginning with choosing batting and thread, layering and basting, starting and stopping, and prepping your machine, and also shows how to quilt background filler, all-over patterns, borders and individual blocks. Included are six projects.
--Quilter's Newsletter; February/March 2013 Issue

About the Author

Natalia Bonner first learned how to piece and quilt on her home sewing machine, and has been quilting professionally for many years. Natalia is a teacher, pattern designer, and popular blogger with numerous awards for her work.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: C&T Publishing (October 16, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1607055376
• ISBN-13: 978-1607055372
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.5 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Crafts & Hobbies > Needlecrafts & Textile Crafts > Quilts & Quilting

More About the Author

Natalia Whiting Bonner has enjoyed piecing quilt tops for more than twenty years. She learned how to quilt on her conventional home machine. She felt good about it, but decided that if she really wanted to take her quilting to the next level, she needed to invest in a longarm machine. In 2007, when she was pregnant with her daughter, she got the crazy idea to quit her job as a dental assistant and become a longarm quilter. Without really knowing what a longarm machine was, she spent a day at a longarm dealer's shop and walked out after purchasing a Gammill machine. Natalia's passion for quilting and being creative has grown each day since.

Shortly after her purchase, Natalia began blogging at piecenquilt.blogspot.com, and blogging became her connection with other quilters and fellow work-at-home moms. By 2009, her quilting business had grown, and it was time to leave the tiny, poorly lit bedroom where she had been doing all her quilting. Natalia moved into a studio at her parents' home, and with the inspiration of her mother, Kathleen Whiting, she has realized that the sky is the limit.

Whether it's working on an intense show quilt or a simple baby quilt, Natalia has become a real quilting addict. She has won numerous awards for her work and has been featured on Moda Bake Shop, in Quiltmaker Magazine and American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine, Fons & Porter Magazine and in books such as Beginner's Guide to Free-motion Quilting, Fresh Fabric Treats, Modern Blocks and Sweet Celebrations with the Moda Bake Shop Chefs.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific resource for quilters of all skill levels October 12, 2012

By The Caffeinated Quilter

Format:Paperback

Although it's titled a "beginner's" guide to free-motion quilting, this book has a wealth of techniques and tips to help everyone improve their free-motion quilting skills. The opening chapter provides a broad overview of the types of thread and batting available, with suggestions for which to choose based on the look you're trying to achieve. The middle section of the book is my favorite. Bonner provides extensive pictures of quilting each design, in-progress and completed. Best of all, she shows how to achieve each design without drawing or tracing it onto the quilt. Many of the traditional designs illustrated in this book include unusual twists, such as combining swirl and flower designs.

The second half of the book includes patterns for six beautiful quilts. Aside from the visual appeal of these quilts, they help you see how the patterns in the beginning of the book look on a real quilt. Finding unusual and simple applique tips hidden among those patterns was an added bonus.

Overall, I appreciated how this book truly makes free-motion quilting approachable. Too many quilters say they can't quilt on their own machine, or they're worried about messing up on the quilt. Bonner's book is a wonderfully clear, simple and stress-free answer to those concerns.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars All about the negative space! October 18, 2012

By Heather F.

Format:Paperback

I am primarily a hand quilter or straight-line machine sewist. This book is great for somebody like me, who isn't new to quilting, but is new to free motion quilting. I love the section on quilting the negative space. It's amazing how the look of quilting completely changes the look of a quilt. Beautiful ideas...modern. Step away from the straight lines, it's time to try something new. If I can do it...anybody can.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent ideas for home machine quilting September 21, 2012

By A. Eapen

Format:Paperback

This book offers several wonderful ideas for machine quilting with your home sewing machine. It is loaded with pictures and step by step guides. On top of that, it includes some nifty quilt patterns to make and try out your skills. I would recommend this to be in all quilters' libraries.