quilt book reviews

Here are a few of my opinions of some new quilting books I have recently acquired.

Quiltmakers Color Workshop is from the guys at funquilts. The book looks at a large selection of quilts and talks about the colours that were chosen for each quilt. It then looks at different variations of each of the colour palettes if you change the hues, the amount of colours or the proportion of each colour. It is quite in depth and a good read. I don’t know if it is worth owning, but definitely worth borrowing from a friend or local library to read through. There are only 4 patterns in the book and they are quite good. The patterns are similar styles to what is in another of their books – Modern Quilt Workshop (which is one of my absolute favourites).

Make your own contemporary quilts. Just from the title you can tell that this isn’t your traditional type quilt book. The patterns and ideas in the book are fairly simple yet effective and stunning. The quilts are more like comforters and would be able to be easily adapted for a doona cover. The different type and textures of fabrics used in the quilts make them really special. I didn’t like this book initially because I thought it was too simple. But the more that I look at it, the more it grows on me and inspires me to try one. My favourite projects are the navy and floral comforter and one that uses linen, satin and thrifted embroidered pieces.

318 patterns is a block pattern book that I got from superbuzzy. I couldn’t find it on the site when I wanted to link to it; so it is possibly out of stock. It basically has templates or diagrams for pieced and appliquéd blocks. In fact there are 318 of them. Most of them are just a black and white drawing but there are a few that have been made. I bought it as I have visions of making small quilts and cushions with the blocks as gifts for kiddies.

The Quilters Ultimate Visual Guide is basically a quilting reference book. It has lots of quilting tips and techniques with information about tools and supplies and everything else quilt related. Everything is listed alphabetically and things are really easy to find quickly. It is a great resource to have handy in the bookshelf. Unfortunately I don’t own this book but I do have it on extended loan from my step mum.