Quilt Blocks, Quilts, Tutorials

My Free Aurifil Mini Pattern and Free Motion Quilting

Aurifil Free Mini Quilt Pattern: Penny Love

I was thrilled to be the Aurifil Designer of the Month for October. I designed a free mini quilt pattern using a little bit of curved piecing. You can find the free quilt pattern on the Aurifil blog right here. The lovely Pat Sloan made her own block using my pattern, and you can see that on her blog here. There’s a dedicated Flickr group for the Aurifil mini quilts, and if you finish a mini or block, you can enter it in the group to be eligible to win a 12-spool Aurifil kit!

I designed this mini quilt for my good friend Penny, and so I’ve named the pattern Penny Love.

I’m not much of a machine quilter/free motion quilter, but I knew I had to quilt this mini. I wasn’t sure if straight line quilting would be appropriate because of the curves, so I turned to The Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book, which is a new release from Amanda Murphy. Amanda is a fabric designer, quilt pattern designer, applique and machine embroidery pro, and author of several books (Color Essentials is one of my favorite books, she just had a coloring book come out, and she also has yet another new book coming out next month called Quilted Celebrations – clearly Amanda does not sleep).

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To start off with, this isn’t a book to teach beginners how to machine quilt. The book assumes you have some foundation in machine quilting already. Rather, the book is geared toward giving you ideas in how to quilt your projects based on the types of blocks that are in your quilt. There are also ideas for sashing, borders, and background. The book is largely composed of illustrations, with several finished quilts to show the use of the techniques in the book.

The most important tidbit that I gleaned about quilting from the book was that I should stitch in the ditch around my blocks before beginning. I tried doing without and first, and things just didn’t look as precise. Stitching in the Ditch made the difference. Also, I used By Annie’s Soft and Stable to quilt the mini to instead of batting, which really made the quilting pop. I used a Kona solid for the hearts (Pomegranate) and a Moda layer cake for the background text fabric (Ink Modern by Zen Chic).

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For this section of my mini quilt, I used the Petals Design on page 35 of The Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book. I used chalk to mark the design before quilting, as I don’t yet feel confident enough to do it without marking first.

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Next, I used overlapping Tubes to fill in my text-print background fabric. There was an idea for such a tube on page 126 of the book.

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To fill the center borders of the mini quilt, I used Ribbon machine quilting, which I found on page 108 of the book. By the way, all of the ideas are broken up into ‘families’, so if you are looking for something similar but just a bit different, you should be able to find them on the suggested pages in the book!

I was really happy to be able to gain a little confidence by using this book to machine quilt my project. If you are interested in picking up The Free-Motion Quilting Idea Book, you can find it at C&T Publishing or on Amazon. If you’d like to download my free Aurifil Mini Quilt Pattern for Penny Love, you can find that here.

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17 thoughts on “My Free Aurifil Mini Pattern and Free Motion Quilting

  1. LINDA says:

    HI, well I’m not much of a FMQer either, but this Book looks like it might help me! Love to check it out! Thanks for sharing!

  2. Annie Unrein says:

    Thanks for using Soft and Stable in your mini quilt! It really makes a nice sturdy little quilt and I love the puffiness that it gives the hearts. Lovely job!

  3. Darlene B says:

    I am loving the previews of this book. It looks like just the resource I need to take the next step in FMQ. Thanks so much!

  4. Kaye Mattson says:

    Thanks for explaining how you used Amanda’s book to plan your quilting. It looks like a very helpful book and I love how you broke down the sections of your hearts to quilt them. It turned out so pretty!

  5. Diana C says:

    I love that you used Amanda’s book for your FMQ inspiration. I recently joined a Facebook group of Amanda’s and we are all piecing the sampler shown in the book and then will quilt them using the ideas in the book. Somewhere in there I’m going to have to take a break and make your adorable mini!

  6. LJ says:

    Cute. I definitely consider myself a beginner at FMQ. Sounds like this book would be perfect for me.

  7. Brenda says:

    I’ve decided I definitely need this book. Every review makes me want it more and more, so it’s going on my list for Santa if I should not be so lucky as to win a copy. I think it will be a great resource.

  8. Lori Morton says:

    This AWESOME BOOK is on my Wish List!!! Soooo encouraging forall of us that are soooo nervous about starting to FNQ! Thanks for sharing your review & how you made your sweet lil’ quilt! 🙂

  9. Béatrice says:

    This book seam great and I’m making your mini .

  10. Lesley says:

    Looks like a great book. Beautiful mini with excellent quilting!

  11. Lisa Marie says:

    This looks like a book full of great ideas!

  12. Donna A. says:

    This book would make a great addition to my quilting library. I never thought of using Soft and Stable in a wall hanging, thanks for the idea.

  13. Mom C says:

    I’ve appreciated the blogs on this hop, I’ve got to get this book. Thanks.

  14. Tiffany says:

    Your mini turned out so cute!

  15. stichnnurse says:

    i love hearts!!! checking out your method of making them!!
    i need LOTS of quilting practice though…. 🙁

  16. This mini is adorable. Love the way you’ve quilted the hearts.

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