Award-winning quilt artist David Taylor is known for the beautiful quilting on his applique quilts, which he quilts using a push-through quilting machine. David quilts on an HQ Sweet Sixteen, but these techniques are also meant for home sewing machines.

His Secrets Revealed

David’s precision techniques and thread choices add dimension and texture to his hand-appliqued pictorial quilts. Learn his secrets for using quilting to bring your pictorial quilts to life.

Running Tiem: 35 Minutes

Ricky’s DVD covers everything once the quilt top is complete, including innovative marking techniques, creating your own quilting designs, managing the quilt, machine trapunto, bobbin quilting and trapunto plus two heirloom binding made completely by machine. The filming is very close-up and shown from Ricky’s viewpoint making it excellent for self-teaching. We have seen the preview and were really impressed – it’s the closest you’ll probably ever get to a real cowboy in your living room!

If you’ve ever admired machine quilted feathers and wished you could stitch them yourself, then this instructional DVD is for you! Beginning with a tutorial on marking the quilt sandwich, this DVD guides you through stitching freeform feathers, feathered hearts, whimsical feathers, and feather embellishments with decorative threads. The tutorial then turns to feathers with a stitched spine and curley-cue feathers with a stitched spine, and then a discussion on ThreadPower…the use of thread as an additional design element in your quilts. It rounds out with a final discussion on uses for feathers in traditional quilts, contemporary quilts, and in art quilts. With such a versatile design element, what quilter wouldn’t want to learn the art of machine quilted feathers?!

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

If you are looking for innovative design ideas to transform your free motion feathers into jaw dropping works of art, then this 2-disc DVD set is for you!

Beginning with a quick review of different design options to alter the character of a given feather, the lesson turns first to one-sided feathers. From there, Patsy discusses and demonstrates several different asymmetric feather designs. The tutorial then turns to a variety of new hyperquilting designs, and next to a chapter that teaches hyperquilting special effects. Lastly, Patsy teaches 4 variations of the “Feather Explosion” design, where background fill designs are created using feathers flowing from feathers. Altogether, this 2-disc set teaches more than 28 new feather designs, so if you’re a quilter who loves to stitch feathers, this DVD is a must-have!

Total Play Time – 4 hours, 5 minutes

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

If you are captivated by the gracious curves of a flowing feather and looking for innovative feather spine designs, then this DVD is for YOU!

This third volume of feather motifs explores the feather spine as a new focus for design work. Whether you make traditional quilts or contemporary quilts, there are feather spine designs to enhance your feather work and add interest and detail to your quilting. This DVD explores feather spine designs suitable for isolated feathers as well as feathers used in continuous borders. In later chapters, the spines are used to define feather shapes such as feathered hearts and feathered wreathes. No matter how you are using feathers in your quilts, these spine designs will transform your feathers into works of art!

Run Time 2 hours 7 minutes

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

2 Disc Set from Patsy Thompson

If you are looking for easy ways to add intereest and innovative design ideas to your feather borders, then this DVD is for you.

Feather borders will neve be the same! From the basic continuous feather border, to different types of centered feather border designs, to a series of feather wave borders, to feathered swag borders, this DVD will cover them all and leave no stone unturned in the quest for an exhaustive tutorial on feather border designs! To top it off, the tutorial ends with threee chapters that cover feather frame designs. Learn how to create complex-appearing borders and frames using basic freeform feathers and give all your quilts that "designer" look.

If you’ve been intrigued by the graceful curves of vines or the intricate designs of leaves and wish to stitch them yourself, then this DVD is for you! With designs applicable to traditional quilts, contemporary quilts, and art quilts, this DVD is a step-by-step tutorial on the free motion stitching of a wide variety of vines as well as garlands of flowers and leaves. You will then learn how to add more interest to your vines and leaves through hyperquilting, or overquilting your stitched motifs with a high contrast decorative thread. Bring the garden of your fantasies to life with your sewing machine as you master these free motion designs and techniques!

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

If you are captivated by the delicate veins of leaves or the curvaceous line of a meandering vine and are looking for ways to add texture and interest to your quilts, then this DVD is for you! This second volume of vine and leaf motifs takes off where Volume 1 ended! We’ll begin by learning new vine and leaf motifs to add to your design repertoire, but that’s only the beginning! We’ll blast off into the exciting world of free motion machine embroidery, and you’ll see just how easy it is to use your free motion skills to add another layer of interest and texture to your quilts! Using your new skills of hyperquilting, free motion embroidery, and free motion machine quilting, your quilted botanical motifs will add new dimension and intrigue to your quilts!

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

Updated version of this popular DVD.

Are you new to free motion machine quilting and need guidance from the ground up? Are you a seasoned free motion machine quilter and looking for some new design ideas for stitching quilted motifs? Then either way, this instructional DVD is for you! This DVD begins with a discussion on the basics of free motion quilting, and then turns to a lesson on preparing the quilt sandwich. The mysteries of mastering sewing machine tension are then unraveled before basic lessons in free motion machine quilting begin. Once the basics are covered, the viewer is introduced to the concept of “Fast and Free”…the technique of creating countless spin-off designs, just by making a small change in one base design. Watch and listen as Patsy shows and discusses how to stitch 18 different quilting designs and gives ideas for additional related spin-off designs. The tutorial ends with a detailed lesson in how to convert your closed toe free motion foot to an open toe foot. With designs suitable for traditional quilts, contemporary quilts, and art quilts, what machine quilter wouldn’t benefit from a tutorial like this?!

Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced

Are you bored with stippling and searching for new design ideas?

If you’re intrigued by the wonderful variety of textures created by intricate quilting designs, or if you just LOVE quilting and are on the lookout for novel background fill designs, then this instructional DVD is for you! With designs applicable to traditional quilts, contemporary quilts, and art quilts, Patsy explains and then demonstrates how to stitch 29 different designs and gives you the tools to create even more spin-off designs!

The tutorial ends with a detailed instruction on how to build your own Plexiglas extension table for your short-arm, mid-arm, or long-arm machine…think of the money you’ll save over buying a frame system! With designs suitable for traditional quilts, contemporary quilts, and art quilts, what machine quilter wouldn’t benefit from a tutorial like this?!

Skill level: Intermediate & Advanced

Please note there are 2 DVD's in Volume 3 with a total playing time of over 4 hours.

If you enjoy free motion quilting and are looking for luscious and innovative quilting designs to enhance and showcase your quilt tops, then this 2-disc set of DVDs is for YOU!

Learn the skills to add pizzazz and beauty to your quilts as Patsy explains and then demonstrates how to stitch more than 35 different quilting designs and gives you the tools to create even more spin-off designs! After that, learn Patsy’s secrets to quilting a large quilt on a home domestic sewing machine, as well as her system for deciding which quilting designs will work on any given quilt. You’ll be exploding with new ideas and free motion quilting skills once you’ve studied this 2-disc set, so get ready to blast off with Patsy into the exciting world of free motion quilting!

Total Play Time – 4 hours, 4 minutes

Click here to visit Patsy Thompson's site where you can see a clip of the DVD.

From Quilting Arts Workshop. Running time: 57 Minutes

With Susan Brubaker Knapp, filmed on the set of Quilting Arts TV.

Susan teaches you the basics of free-motion machine stitching, including thread work to enhance the surface and quilting to hold the layers together beautifully. Find out what materials you’ll need and how to get started. Beginners and intermediates—and those who have been too terrified to try until now—will find inspiration and answers, as well as lots of tips, techniques, and practical information to improve their machine stitching. Stitchers of all levels will benefit from Susan’s thorough approach—from her careful consideration of materials and preparation (including advice on how to chill out), to the differentiation between thread sketching and machine quilting. Learn the benefits and purpose for each of these methods, and find plenty of inspiration through Susan’s artful examples.

Materials List

Fabrics: high-quality cotton commercial prints, hand-dyes, and batiks, washed (without fabric softener) to remove sizing
Threads (I use all-cotton threads of different weights. I like Aurifil Cotton Mako 40 and 50 and YLI® variegated quilting threads.)
Batting (I use mostly low-loft 100% cotton batting, usually Quilters Dream Cotton “Request” or “Select.”)
Stabilizer (I use Pellon® 100% polyester sew-in interfacing #910. Use a fairly stiff non-woven interfacing; flimsy, flexible interfacings will not work.)
Fusible product with at least one paper side (I use Lite Steam-A-Seam 2® by The Warm™ Company.)
Machine needles for cotton thread
Sewing machine that can drop its feed dogs
Free-motion quilting foot (clear plastic), or a darning foot
Pins: straight quilting pins and “pregnant” quilter’s pins (the pins with the bump that are used for basting before machine quilting)