RaNae Merrill (Photo by Dave Cross)

Ever since I started teaching Free-Motion Mastery in a Month, the question my students ask most often is "Now that I can quilt, how do I decide what designs to put where on my quilt?"  Layers & Lines answers that question.

We'll discuss Story, Personality, Contrast, Layers, Structure and the relationship between Piecing and Quilting. Looking at photos of a wide variety of quilts we'll examine how to apply these concepts to creating a quilting design. And since thread is the "paint" of quilting, we'll also discuss thread color, fiber and weight.

After Layers & Lines, you will have the tools to create quilting designs that take your quilt tops from special to spectacular! You'll never look at a quilt the same again!

About RaNae

I began quilting in 1989 (my first year of graduate school) by finishing a quilt my grandmother had been making for me when she died in 1976. (It turned out to be king-size and I hand quilted the whole thing!) Later I found a batch of nine-patch squares in a trunk that had belonged to her, and I started using those to make baby quilts for my nieces and nephews. When people began praising my designs and suggesting that I quilt professionally, I brushed off the idea as impractical.

So it was a surprise to me when I stumbled into quilting professionally back in 2005. I took some fabric design ideas to a few fabric manufacturers for feedback. To my surprise, Blank Quilting bought one of the groups I showed them. As I left the meeting, the designer I had met with suggested that I go to Quilt Market in Houston. I ended up at Quilt Festival and that was my first quilt show. It blew my mind! I saw quilts in a totally new way. And I learned that it was possible to make a career of quilting.

I published my first book,Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts,in 2008, inspired by a doodle of a spiral I drew while on a temp job back in the mid-1980's. That book was followed by two more books about spiral quilts: Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts and Sideways Spiral Quilts. 

Free-Motion Mastery in a Month, my fourth book, is a shift from quilt design to free-motion quilting. It's based on my experience as a pianist and piano teacher. Who knew when I started taking piano lessons at age 4 (and eventually got a Master's Degree in Piano Performance) that it would lead to teaching free-motion quilting?!  It has been really fun to see  people  get excited about this unique approach to learning FMQ! (That's a very young me sitting at the very large piano.)

Three more books have followed since then: T-Shirt Quilts . . . One Block at a Time!, an easy way to make t-shirt quilts; Not Your Grandma's Nine-Patch Quilts, which contains all the patterns for those first quilts I made from my grandma's blocks; and The 1-Hour Quilt Top, which you'll love if you like fast quilts.

The day I got my first box of books back in October 2008 I walked out the door to my first teaching engagement and I've been teaching ever since. I've taught throughout the USA, and also in South America (where I teach in Spanish).

Somewhere in all of that, I also worked for a few years as a photographer and a travel writer. I still love to travel, though lately it seems like more of a treat to stay home and explore New York City!  Whenever I can, I love getting out into nature to hike, kayak, ski and watch meteor showers.