Quilting Books

This elegant book will appeal to stitchers who want to experiment with cloth and thread as a fine art medium. The authors have organized the book as a course you can work through on your own, with exercises which really help you to loosen up and start exploring with your needle and thread.

They start you out with some basic stitches with variations to play around with, then move on to cover paint and dye techniques for creating interesting background cloths. Next they explore more complex stitch ideas, design integration, and combining hand and machine stitching. Finally they investigate mark making and image making as a fine art process.

Even without the exercises and the instructive text, the photographs themselves are worth the price of this book. There are beautiful full-color photos on almost every page. The book was published in 1999, and the work is contemporary enough to still be visually interesting. It's a shame this book did not stay in print, since it is one of the best contemporary stitching books I've seen.

This, along with the booklets Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn have written are so good. The photos are wonderful, and completely inspirational. All are worth having. Anyone interested in surface design, embroidery..with an emphasis on machine work, or texture in your work should look at these. Worth looking around for.

Mary Stori has staked out the world of beaded embellishment as her specialty and it is a good thing for the rest of us. Her enthusiasm for the form is palpable, her directions are clear and complete. The quilt designs sown in the book are more cute than elegant, but this reflects the type of small projects that one could finish in a workshop. The methods could easily be adapted to more sophisticated applications.   Mary shows each stitch in a close up picture and illustration and accompanies this with written instructions that are easy to follow. If you follow her suggestion and make a beaded sampler of each stitch, you will be well on your way to embellishing your first real project. Tip and tricks keep you from making the same mistakes she made while learning. Eight projects are given in detail.

I absolutely loved the book and am already starting to collect beads..."anything with a hole in it" ! It may be "non-traditional" but the information is priceless. As a person who has never added beads to anything I found the stitch instructions were well written and the illustrations are excellent, well worth the price of the book. As an added bonus, you can get some great ideas of how to use beads by studying some of Mary Stori's very whimisical and funny quilts. You will love the humor in all Mary's quilts and her techniques for using beads are fantastic.

Or how to make a scrap quilt fast and accurately without sweat ! Every time I look at this book I want to try a new pattern : the technique is well explained and there are great photos of all the quilts projects. There are also extra pictures of old "Stringies" to inspire you. If you've never tried string quilts before this is the book for you.

I bought this book and my fingers started itching to make one or all of these patterns. But first,the fun part --- just keep stitching long, or not so long, strips of scrap fabrics of all kinds together. Follow the simple instructions combining colors and prints, whatever you pull out of your scrap pile. When you're finished you'll have some really funky material to work with. Now use the measurements or templates given to make squares, triangles, diamonds, whatever, to make a new old-fashioned looking quilt. Lots of color pictures are included to give you a great selection. OR design your own. Believe me, it's not difficult! That's why this book is so great.

Strip-Pieced Quilts: Easy Designs from Just Six Fabrics by Maaike Bakker. That Patchwork Place 2005, ISBN 1564776395, 80 pages, color illustrations.

I found this book in my local library and toted it home for some inspiration. This book would be great for a beginning quilter and yet will also give experienced quilters some ideas to launch off from in making their own unique quilts.

The six fabrics that the author recommends are either gradations of tones within a color family or a blend of light to dark fabrics throughout the rainbow. It is amazing to me how many designs can be accomplished using this simple formula. She even shows two quilts that used the exact same fabrics being used only with different settings.

The book begins with some simple instructions for picking fabric, then cutting it into 2 ½" strips using the rotary cutter, piecing the strips together and then cutting those stripped pieces into blocks. Instructions are also given for piecing the quilt together and machine quilting it. Each quilt is shown in color and with color illustrations to show the details of it's construction.

It is in the extra details that she uses that sets these quilts apart from being run of the mill easy pieced quilts. Using simple borders and pieced borders she makes each quilt have it's own personality. The pieced borders are cut to complement the pieced blocks. While some of the borders look like they may be difficult, the instructions show them to be fairly simple to execute.

I have a huge fabric stash and know I could make any quilt in this book using just 6 fabrics, but the scrap quilter in me is thinking, "what if I found 6-7 fabrics with matching colors/tones and used them in place of each single fabric thereby using 36 pieces of fabric instead of only 6?" Of course, I would be trying to find the right matches from my box of pre-cut 2 ½" strips so matching the colors and tones would be the main part of the project. As I said previously, an experienced quilter can use this book as launch pad for ideas! Or I could buckle down and make a quilt using just the 6 fabrics, but I know whatever project design I look at, I always make changes and make it mine. That is what creativity is all about. Some of us just need a little inspiration to get us going into a different path. This book should help.

I liked this book so well that I went and bought two (by mistake) I am partial to traditional quilts, but I like the different spin this has and I don't there too hard for beginner to intermediate.

I keep looking at this book and have a hard time deciding which quilt to make. I currently made Taylor's board and it came out beautiful. I also have the rail fence started. Directions are easy to follow and very well done. The descriptions of the color values helped me. I am very interested in Deanna's second book, but I need more time with her first on before I move on.

I did Laurens windmill as a first time quilter and had fabulous results. I bought the kit and couldn't believe that it would turn out as well as it did. I will be ordering another kit soon and will let you know how that turned out as well. It took all of 4 hours to have the top completed. I really am impressed with the ease of the instructions and hte helpful charts.
Happy stitching!

this is an amazing book. not only are the quilts (made by the author and others) incredible, but she is overwhelmingly generous with instructions, advice, suggestions and techniques. the quilts range from relatively traditional to outright funky.

this is not a pattern books--there are no directions for making any of the quilts. however, the quilts show what wonderful effects are possible when using stripes in imaginative ways.

this is also a book to inspire a quilter to go beyond squares and triangles, to re-think traditional blocks, and to stretch her creativity.

highly recommended to any quilter.

I've always wanted to use striped fabrics in traditional quilt blocks, but never achieved the result I had in mind. Excellent illustrations and directions, inspiring photographs -- this is the breakthrough book I needed.

Patricia Nelson's Stylish Sewing presents techniques for quilted and embellished clothing. Sixteen projects are outlined in a title which tells how to embellish off-the-rack clothing for enhanced flair.

Terrific first book by this lady. She's done a nice job of sharing the techniques she's used to win national competitions and excite people she's taught all over the country. But perhaps I don't have perspective... I'm married to her and lived through the creative process! If you're into machine quilting or myriads of other embellishment techniques, take a look and add your comments!

Two driven people...going in two different directions.

When fate and a fake wedding bring Ellie and Sam together, the odds of them staying together seem long...but sometimes love finds a way to bridge distance!

I enjoyed spending the day getting to know Ellie and Sam...two purpose-driven people whose pathways cross. The electricity between them is immediate, even though they try to deny it.

The descriptions of North Carolina, especially the Pilot Mountain area, will make you want to visit the state. The author paints lovely pictures both of the countryside and the people. You will want to meet Ellie and Sam and will be cheering for them at the end of the book!

Ms. Hutchens is a newly published writer of romantic fiction. I look forward to reading her next book...and her next book...and her next book...

AMAZING book! Not only does it offer full-sized patterns of these two characters, it shows how to do each in redwork or applique. I have never seen a more complete assortment of designs.

My first memories as a child , was being wrapped up in a Sunbonnet Sue hand made quilt,that my grandmother and mother had made just for me.
Your attention to detail and yet keeping with the simple , designe's from the past is wonderful. You've given me some helpful information and great instructions . Your illustrations are beautiful. Thank you Jean

Great book! Fun projects and easy to understand language, especially for the beginning quilter!

This book will inspire even the most inept quilter to leap in and create lovely gifts for any occasion. Easy to understand and a joy to work with.