Quilting Books

"Everyone Can Quilt With Kaye Wood" offers projects and techniques that will make anyone, regardless of quilting experience, successful. With over 30 years of teaching experience and as host of her own quilt show, Ms. Wood has led thousands of quilters through the beginning steps of quiltmaking. She knows how to "make it happen" and "make it happen" she does in this delightful book.

Chapter 1 serves as an introduction and begins by helping you decide if you are a pointless quilter or a pointed quilter. Next, you'll find a list of the supplies that you will need to get started, some really good advice on how much fabric to buy and how to feed your fabric stash. All of this information is delivered with a nice blend of wit and wisdom.

There are over 20 projects included in the book ranging from "No Problem" quilts to more complicated star patterns. There are small quilts, large quilts, pillows, potholders, and table toppers. All patterns have accuracy built in to the construction process, making them virtually fool-proof. If you've ever watched "Kaye's Quilting Friends" on television, you've seen her use her Starmaker rulers to simplify the construction of her star blocks. For the star patterns in the book, Ms. Wood has included templates that will allow you to make your own Starmakers. You can also purchase the Starmakers from her website.

As a bonus, there are lots of great tips, humorous stories, and photographs from the author's long career as a quilt teacher and television personality that will have you chuckling while you are learning.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is just learning to quilt, or who wants to learn an easier way to make star quilts. I have no doubt that everyone CAN quilt with this wonderful book from Kaye Wood.

Having seen Hari Walner on the HGTV show "Simply Quilts", I purchased this book to take a stab at her machine trapunto technique. I have no quilting experience,was using a 27 year old sewing machine, and my sewing skills were very rusty. My first project(Sparkling Dahlia)was a huge success thanks to the easy to follow instructions, illustrations, and patterns contained in this book.

I found real inspiration in the beautiful color photographs of the many quilts which incorporated the machine trapunto technique in combination with a wide variety of other quilting techniques.

I was pleased to see photographs and brief biographies of the 21 quilters who contributed to the book. It was also nice to see Hari credit those who assisted her with her own projects.

This book is not meant to be a beginning quilters "Bible". It is a wonderful book for anyone interested in adding the machine trapunto technique to their sewing skills repertoire.

Don't be fooled by the prettiness of these quilts; gorgeous can--and is in this case--easy. Breaking the construction process apart, you'll see that it's very simple. Joanne pieces a background for her quilts, then cuts her "collage" pieces from printed fabric and appliques them in place. For instance, the flowers in a still life of flowers are simply cut out of a large print flowery fabric. Easy! Use of motifs from printed fabrics rather than a calico is what gives these quilts their pow.

Highly recommended!

This is the best book I Have ever read on art projects. The ones in this book involve fabric, and are relly fun to make. The pictures are great, and each project is taught step by step with a special picture. It is very easy to follow along, and I will be using this book for a long time. I recommend it to teachers and parents that want to have their kids make fun projects without getting confused. A must read.

Louise Handley's FABRIC SILHOUETTES: QUILTED TREASURES FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM is a gorgeous and unique crafter's guide which tells how to begin with an ordinary photo, enlarge it, transfer key figures to fabric, and stitch such to a special background, creating a virtual fabric scrapbook of art as a result. From what kinds of photos best lend to the silhouette process to ten projects to follow step-by-step to get your feet wet, FABRIC SILHOUETTES is a wonderful new approach to keepsake creation.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is a 69 page pamphlet packed with patterns; most of them are in color. The book gives different suggestions on how to combine them and use them. Some patterns are just alphabet letters.

There does not seem to be a scheme to the patterns. They include:
Santa, angel, three wise men, candy cane, snow man, fish, owl, butterfly, frog, happy face, mouse, dragon, monkeys, giraffe, eagle, whale, king, queen, jack, air plane, boat, Colonel Sanders, turtle, chess pieces, chess board, deer, turkey, apple, pine apple, cherry, and abstract designs, to name a few.

This is a good collection to encourage you to do your own designs.

The history is interesting.The patterns are full size,and beautiful. You can do a mix and match from the various patterns ,or follow them as they are presented. The birds are folksy, abstract,and realistic .Depending on what you are looking for, you will certainly find it in this book as it relates to birds and flowers. There are color plates of the completed quilts,and the patterns are in clear black lines. The book is very well done.

This is one of my all time favorite sewing books and it DOES live up to it's name. Fast, fun and EASY! I made two covers within the first week of getting the book.

The instructions are detailed, concise and easily understood, even by me and I'm a self-taught, novice.

Best things about this book are that the instructions allow you to cover ANY book you want from checkbooks, journals to cookbooks, paperbacks, EVERYTHING. I absolutely LOVE this book! Also, for other "hoarders" like me, who can't bear to get rid of the bigger scraps of fabric I have left from other projects, not to worry! You can easily incorporate those scraps into fabulous designs! If I sound like I'm gushing, I AM! I can see myself using this book for years and years to come without getting tired of it.

The book details the supplies needed to get started but I found I already had almost all of them including a mat and rotary cutter, glue gun, etc.

The only downside and it's not much of one is that the covers are finished using a satin stitch on the edges which can be a bit tedious but it looks SO GREAT when you're done. I even added some metal charms I had floating around in my button box.

The sky's the limit with this book and I found it really stimulated my creativity. This one's a keeper!

I'm having a blast making the projects in this book. These techniques are really fun and interesting. I just wish I could contact the author for the professionally made templates. I'm having trouble making them myself. The web site listed in the book isn't correct any more.

I haven't made anything from this book yet, but it's really great just to look at. They give directions for several quilts made traditional or scrappy. Some are Bear's Paw, trees, houses, stepping stones, nine patch..really nice book, but I like most of these ladies' books.