From Daisy to Paisley: 50 Beginner Level Free Motion Quilting Designs

Nice book. Plenty to try.

You can watch Leah Day in short, professionally-done videos sewing every pattern in this booklet. So why bother buying it? Here's how I used it.1. took certain pages to copy store and had them enlarged and reduced to seewhat was best for the quilt i was working on. Had two copies made of each pattern, wasserved a good cup of coffee while I waited & got caught up on town gossip.2. following Day's advice to trace the pattern five times before sewing, I bought ablackboard from the roadside vender and a watermelon from hiswife. Got an update on town gossip. In tracing the pattern, I discovered thatthe size I had chosen was too small for my arthritic hands. adjusted upward.3. passed the booklet around my quilt group, one of whom almost forgot to giveit back. Quilters are a tactile people. A couple of the quilters commented thatthey enjoy videos but ilke to have a pattern in hand to really study.4. sat in the sunshine with a cold G&T while I studied, and marked up, the booklet.It's got good-sized margins for that. Decided to cut up extra Echo Shell patternso that i could trace it on the border in disappearing ink.. undecided. need another G&T.Try doing all that with a video.An addition five stars for the layout and design. It has 80 pages andevery one (except the blank last one) is beautifully laid out .Instructions are clear and concise. e.g. take the slightly difficult but lovelyEcho Hook pattern...here is what she says to stitch this design, first stitch a curving, circular shape, but don't complete the circle all the way. Come to a point then echo this line back to the starting line to create your first hook. Travel stitch and echo the hook 2-4 times. Travel along the last echo and branch off with a new hook in another direction.See---she makes it all so easy. plus 7 pages of general info on FMQ.five stars for content, 10 stars for presentation.

If you are a free motion quilter, or want to be, you will find some great quilting patterns here, many of which you won't see in other books. Leah has gathered 50 of her hundreds of filler designs and put them in this little book ( just over 5x8 inches). She also includes some general tips about Free Motion Quilting. She is very innovative in her designs and groups them into 11 categories, according to the type of design it is (stacking, overlapping, edge-to-edge, etc.). Many of the designs are simple enough for a beginner, others will challenge a more experienced quilter.The small size makes it easy to find a place for it to sit by your machine as a reference while quilting. My only complaint is the binding. On Leah's website it specifies that this book is spiral bound. She was out of stock, so I went looking and found it here on Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was even a little lower in cost. It didn't occur to me that it would be a different product. This volume was not spiral bound, something I will now be having done to it so that it can lay open by my machine as a reference.All of these designs are shown in free demos on her website, but I like having these in a book that I can flip through and keep handy for reference. I will like it even better when it is spiral bound.

I purchase another book by Leah Day (using a walking foot) and love the instructions she provides. I expected this book to be just as great but was disappointed. I am just getting into free motion so thought this "beginners guide" would help ... I need a little more explanation than what was provided tho. Also, books is pretty small but I guess I should have read the details description better. I will still look for books by Leah Day however. She is a delight to watch on YouTube.

I was at a long arm quilter's home recently and she highly recommended the "365 Free Motion Quilting Designs" by the same author. I was very surprised on how expensive that book was. After discovering and exploring the author's website, I found her "beginner" book and I felt it was more appropriate for where I am at quilting and it was substantially cheaper.I was disappointed that the book was not spiral bound as it was described on her website. I am also disappointed that it does not include more diagrams on how to quilt each design. She does, however, include narrative descriptions.I am still overall happy with the book and I will use it as a reference. I will use it in conjunction with her website. Her website is incredible. It includes lots of quilt design photos and videos. I feel that, by buying this book, I am supporting the excellent work she is doing on her website with her "The Free Motion Quilting Project".

This is a wonderful free motion quilting book, focusing on many different filler designs. Very creative and an excellent way to expand your free motion techniques. All designs are meant to be stitched on a standard home sewing machine using an embroidery, darning, or free-motion foot (same thing). The pictures are clear and easy to follow. I purchased the Kindle Fire edition and can easily see and follow the designs. They don't show up quite as well on my regular Kindle, but still definitely can see and follow them. The illustrations are basically white stitching against a black background, so the contrast is perfect. Completely pleased with the electronic version for the Fire but might consider the printed book instead for a regular B/W e-reader. I am a quilting teacher and am recommending this as follow-up materials for my students.

My Mom loves Leah Day and referenced her as her inspiration to work on harder books. I bought the kindle edition and sent it to her as a surprise and she was a little disappointed. The designs are wonderful and beautiful but if I had not given her the kindle edition and if she did not have a HD kindle she would have to go online to view the videos. She has worked on the first two so far and maybe I can upgrade my review when she is done but at this time she says the videos are short for what she is looking. Was hoping for more detailed instructions. She does still say she is happy I sent this to her but I was really hoping it would help her better.

I bought this book because I enjoy watching Leah Day's YouTube videos and wanted a handy reference. If you want to do free-motion quilting, visit her site, daystyledesigns.com and watch her in action. She provides lots of tips, information about the materials she favours and more, and it is all free.The plus points:* The book is small, portable, and each design fits neatly on one or two pages.* There are 50 designs and they are all pretty easy (provided you are reasonable at free-motion quilting in the first place - and if you aren't, you just need practice).* There is a clear photo of each finished stitch and sometimes a diagram, and there are written accompanying instructions (although these are fairly brief).* The written instructions tell you where to start stitching and the order after that, so if you don't have access to the on-line videos, you can still stitch the design.Not so hot:* The instructions are very brief. I think you really need to watch the video to see how it is done, especially if you are a beginner, although these are free on the web so that isn't too much of a hardship. So see this as an accompaniment to the free web video series, not as a stand-alone. I think the book was only meant to be used in that way.Experienced quilters should buy the author's bigger, more expensive book  365 Free Motion Quilting Designs . This larger book does not contain instructions, but then if you have access to the internet, you can watch the stitching method there. It has 365 designs rather than the 50 in 'From Daisy to Paisley'. 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs

I've bought the Kindle version which I'm using on Kindle for Mac. It's an excellent companion to Leah Day's free video lessons on the Free Motion Project, having a good selection of the patterns arranged in groups, each one with a link to the appropriate video. This, I felt , gave the Kindle version the edge over the print copy. I highly recommend following the links and watching the videos; Leah has a gentle calm delivery, and has a way of making even the most complicated pattern easy to follow.

I just love free machining, and this is a wonderful book to enable me to stitch some wonderfully different designs. It has stretched my abilities, although I do need to do some more practice. I can thoroughly recommend this book to stitchers who want to widen their abilities with free machining.

Liked the publication. Good size for keeping by machine. Clear and concise and very good for a beginner.

Good easy to follow steps and includes links to the relevant videos. I look forward to practicing the techniques demonstrated.