365 Free Motion Quilting Designs Paperback – August 7, 2016

I have followed Leah Day's YouTube channel and blog for years. She's a great teacher and has a lot of creative ideas. I've posted so many of her designs to my Pinterest page that I finally decided just to have a hard copy. So many times I find myself stumped for FMQ filler ideas. I will stall a quilt for days just trying to come up some ideas about what to quilt in the background and negative spaces. Not to mention edge to edge ideas.This book is filled with inspiration. And while it's not an instruction manual on how to achieve the design (she addresses this in the intro and gives you the address to visit to watch the corresponding tutorial video) it does jog your brain for possibilities to use. I just love it! And the good thing is that while her videos teach the design on really small squares on a domestic machine, the designs can be made as large or as small as you need them to be, on a longarm, with no additional effort!I highly recommend this book as a great reference tool, no matter what your experience level is!

This book is a wonderful source for "filler" free motion quilting designs. The large, good quality photos are sufficient for an experienced free motion quilter to figure out how they are stitched. While there are no instructions, Leah Day provides the web address where one can access tutorials for each design and they are very helpful. The photos are listed numerically in the order she originally designed them but there is an alphabetical index that uses the descriptive names that is useful for looking up specific designs. All are designed for stitching on a home sewing machine without the need for any marking. While these are "filler" designs, many of them could be expanded or adapted to a larger scale to be used for panographs or other purposes. This large format, sturdily bound paperback has become one of my most used quilting resources. I would recommend it to any machine quilter looking to expand their design options.

I am very pleased with this book! It is definitely a go to book when I am stalled on quilting ideas. I will say that I have become more adventuresome in my quilting ideas since using this book and watching her videos.When first checking out the reviews on this book, I had seen some reviewers say they were disappointed that it is made up of pics and not informative. I stalled in purchasing it due to it's cost and knowing that I could go online and see all 365 of Leah Day's designs for free.Prior to purchasing my book, I borrowed a friend's book thinking I would just look at it and decide I didn't need it, Well, once I borrowed this book, I saw how much I really used it. I finally came to the conclusion that, I loved the convenience and ease of having the book by my sewing machine to look through it for ideas. I can then see what to look up on Leah Day's free 365 designs website, if I couldn't figure out how it was sewn by the picture itself. It also has me thinking how I could use parts of her designs to create those of my own.While I would have liked to have found it for less, I am not disappointed in what I paid because I know I will use this book alot.In fact, the first quilt I quilted using designs out of the book, my husband told me it was the best quilt I had done because of the quilting designs. I also am happy to have purchased a book by an author who has freely given out so much quilting information on the internet to help so many of us.

I've been waiting for this book to be published, and it is worth the wait. The photos are amazing. I do wish that Leah Day would have added more information about techniques, but her web site is a "must have" resource overflowing with useful information, tutorials, tips, techniques, and more: [...]. I highly recommend this book for all levels of free motion quilters, from beginners to advanced.

My original title was Just Amazing! but I decided to tone that down a bit. Still the book, and the Free Motion Project really are amazing.Leah Day is one of a group of machine quilting teachers who have changed the concept of quilting your own quilts on a home machine. She created the Free Motion Project because when she started nothing like it existed. And frankly, nothing like it exists even now although there finally are other books and websites that complement what she has done. I own a bunch of the books that are equally wonderful, but totally different from this one.First, what this book and what it isn't. This book won't teach you how to do free motion quilting. You need to go to Leah Day's website for that. And it won't teach you how to do all of the wonderful patterns shown in this book. There is a free YouTube video for every one of them. You need to go to the web for that as well. Right now there are no negative reviews complaining about the book based on what it never attempted to do, but they probably will happen at some point, which is why I'm warning all of you about what you won't find here.So what does this book do? First of all she has taken all the designs she developed and organized them in an order that will allow you to actually dig in and learn the designs. The easy ones are in the front. The hard ones are in the back. Second it gives you a catalog of the designs you can hold in your hand. I've accessed the videos from the online catalog. It can be done. But it isn't easy.And second these are really good photographs. Much better than the ones I tried to print out at home from her online site.And third, believe it or not, this is the cheapest way to have a copy of all of the designs. Paper and ink are not free.Just an update. As Leah Day commented I am wrong about the designs being in order of difficulty.