I pre-ordered Christina Cameli's 2nd book, Step-by-Step Free-Motion Quilting, because I enjoyed her first book First Steps to Free Motion Quilting and of course, her amazing Craftsy class, The Secrets of Free-Motion Quilting. The book arrived and I finally have a chance to tell you about it.
This is a pretty thick book (191 pages), as far as quilting design books go. There are only a few pages of text talking about the skills required for free-motion quilting and the groups of designs Christina uses to separate the shapes (forms). The entire remainder of the book consists of sketches of designs and a few lines on how to form them. While I appreciate the inspiration, I was disappointed with the limited discussion and I think some 'real life' quilt photography showing how the designs stitch out would have been very helpful. Even if some small sample swatches of actual stitching were included it would allow the quilter to have a sense of what the finished design could look like in fabric and thread. Also, I find it much easier to select a design if I know where on a quilt, or in a quilt block, it would work and fit well. This book is only a reference for free-motion design ideas, not a 'how-to quilt' or 'where to quilt it' exploration.
If you are looking for an expanded repertoire of quilting designs based on simple shapes you will enjoy this sketchbook of ideas. If you need a bit more instruction on quilting basics, and simple projects to make for practice, you'll probably be better off starting with Christina's first book. I'm glad to have both in my library as the second is kind of an extension of the first.
hey Angie ... I've caught the quilting bug again and I saw you're using a gracie frame with a janome. Can you give me some advice? I have a Juki TL2010Q and it looks like it's compatible ...and the most affordable at this time. Do you have any pointers?
Posted by: Angie | March 16, 2015 at 09:29 AM