Quilting Book Reviews
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Fast Fabric Gift Cards by Kendra L. Maclean

Use the instructions and ideas in this book to create environmentally-friendly hand-made gifts for friends and family for any occasion. The author provides clear instructions for making 12 fabric cards that she designed, or you can use her methods and ideas to design and make your own unique cards. There are also instructions for making fabric envelopes. I really like this book because the projects are small and quick and lend themselves to using up all kinds of fabric scraps, buttons, ribbons, etc. My family likes to exchange hand-made gifts, so I'm making several of these cute cards.

Scraps & Shirttails: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle! The Art of “Quilting Green” by Bonnie K. Hunter.

I am so excited about this book – one of my favorite scrap quilters, Bonnie Hunter has published a book. Inspired by antique “utility quilts”, Bonnie has designed patterns that use fairly large, simple blocks to create beautiful functional quilts. In her forward to the book, Bonnie writes movingly about how we live in a world of over abundance and tells that this book is a result of her desire to help the world by keeping fabrics out of landfills. I couldn’t agree more, Bonnie. Thanks for writing this wonderful book.

What you’ll learn from this book

• ideas for quilting greener and more economically too!
• how to deconstruct clothing to get the most fabric that you can from it
• how to store your stash of fabrics efficiently so that you have more time to quilt
• how to do the math to add a pieced border to a quilt top (these instructions are great!)

And here is a fun thing – fabric amounts in this book are given in both number of shirts and traditional yardage. I highly recommend this fun, green, and delightful to read book!

For those who are just starting out ...

Mom gave me Teach Yourself Machine Piecing & Quilting (Contemporary Quilting) by Debra Wagner. This is an excellent book to learn from and refer back to. The author begins with a chapter discussing the basic supplies and equipment you'll need to quilt, including details about why types of fabric you could use, rotary cutting vs scissors, threads and more. Other chapters cover cutting methods, ironing, matching seams, displaying and storing quilts and more. The book includes several complete patterns with instructions for blocks and machine quilting motifs. Her illustrations are very clear and support the text nicely. This book is all you need to get started making quilts.

The second book Mom got for me was called Machine Quilting Made Easy by Maurine Noble. I still refer to this book regularly and used it constantly when I first started machine quilting. She teaches you how to machine quilt by taking you through a series of exercises to do on your machine using small quilt sandwiches.

After I'd been quilting for several years, I decided I wanted to learn how to quilt my pieces by hand. Crazy, I know, but I find hand work to be so relaxing and I truly enjoy it. I signed up for a class, but it was canceled, so I purchased Hand Quilting by Alex Anderson. I highly recommend this book! There are numerous color photographs with detailed captions that clearly depict the way to position and rock your fingers on both hands so that you can achieve tiny, beautiful, hand stitches. There are two sets of photographs, one for right-handed quilters and one for left-handed quilters. The second part of the book is made up of 6 projects ranging which feature hand quilting. (Incidently, all of these lend themselves nicely to quilting greener because they feature solid fabrics. Solid colors are much more common in organic and earth-friendly fabrics at the point in time.)

I learned to applique by taking a class at my LQS and using the book Applique 12 Easy Ways by Elly Sienkiewicz. I think this is a great book for learning applique technique because you learn several different ways to do the same thing. this is important because it gives you a range of techniques to use depending on the type of project you are doing and the look you want to achieve. Most of the patterns in the book focus on hearts which are a good shape to practice on because they contain both types of curves (convex and concave) and inward and outward points. The drawings and instructions in the book are very clear and easy to follow.

For those looking for new or more advanced techniques

The techniques used in the book are simple with the most important one being learning to make nice looking circles. What this book offers that is unique is great insight into the use of fabric color and design to make stunning quilts with relatively simple construction. There are extensive color photographs, illustrating the color conceps that Reynola is teaching. I've made several beautiful quilts and wall-hangings using the techniques I learned from this book.

This is the book that I used to learn paper peicing. I originally bought it just because I loved the animals and this book contains really cute patterns for dozens of paper pieced animals. Once I started using the book, I realized that I had no idea how to do paperpiecing, the primary technique used to make all those adorable animals. It turns out that A Quilter's Ark has great directions to teach you how to paper piece. One that I particularly like is that she has you use interfacing as the backing/paper piece pattern. It is really eash to work with and you don't have to go back and pull the interfacing out like you would for regular paper piecing,

Path Speth and Charlene Thode have authored a series of 3 books which are fantastic for making quilts out of scraps. They books are call "Nickel Quilts", named because most parterns strart with 5" squares. This book as beautiful ilustrationg and very clear instructions. Most patterns are given in a variey of sizes ranging from small wall-quilts to king-sized bed.

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