Modern Quilting Designs

114 Pages·2012·27.123 MB·English

by  Bethany Pease

Dedication
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.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Nancy Pease, Nancy Johnson, Marylin Harlow-Maynard, Cathy McKillip, and John
Adams (aka Quilt Dad).
INTRODUCTION
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
away—anything 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 wasn’t 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 mother’s 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 mother’s
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 on—longarm or domestic—you 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.
Everywhere I look I am inspired.
I love my job because the creative possibilities are endless. Everywhere I look I am inspired.
Whether it’s 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 friend’s shirt, the illustrations
in a children’s book, random stickers at the craft store, or the symbol on the outside of a cardboard
box—inspirations 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
people’s 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 (Figures 1, 2, and 3).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3