Friday, August 9, 2013

National Book Lover Day

In honor of National Book Lover Day, the Moda Bake Shop is having fun blog tour about our first quilting book.


So, my quilting adventure started January 18th, 2012... you may be asking yourself, "How on earth could she possible know the day she started quilting?"   You can read all about my adventurous quilting beginnings, HERE and HERE.

Within a day or two of starting to quilt, I was at JoAnn Fabric and miraculously happened upon the MOST AWESOME quilting book ever!!!  To this day I still think there was a little divine intervention in quilting book isle at JoAnn's.



(You can read my blog post about buying the book HERE)

I instantly fell in love with the patterns in the book.... the initial reason I bought the book.  Once I got it home, I read it from cover to cover.  I had never heard of a person quilting their own quilts on their home machine before.  What?  Could this be true?  I was so inspired by the WHOLE book!

One of my favorite tips was in her directions about how to prepare a quilt sandwich or baste a quilt.  Her method is fantastic!!!

I have even made one of the quilts from this book.


My second daughter loved it and requested it for her 18th birthday.  Blogged HERE.

Since my first days of quilting, I have purchased many, many quilting books.  My current fave is Natalia Bonner's Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting.


I fmq most all of my quilts myself and Natalia's instructions and illustrations make learning to improve my fmq a snap!  Natalia is a machine quilting GENIUS! :) ...if only I could get my feathers to look more like hers and less like chubby bums ;D

So, what are your favorite quilting books?  Please, oh please, share :)

xo



10 comments:

  1. Thankfully I have both those books in my collection. One of my favorites is Jinny Beyer's The Quilters Album of Patchwork Patterns - a great resource. Thanks.

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  2. I don't really have any favorites. I learned mostly via magazines! Thanks for sharing!

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  3. You hit it right on the button! The Practical Guide to Patchwork came out a year or two after I started quilting and I have been SO curious about it ever since. I am sure it is amazing because Elizabeth Hartman is amazing. I've also been hoping to get my hands on either Natalia's book or one of Angela Walters.
    Maybe for Christmas...

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  4. My first bible was and is Harriet Hargrave. But I just discovered Elizabeth Hartman and want to try some of her ideas. This hop is fun and filled with dangerous ideas

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  5. I love Simplify by Camille Roskelley :)
    thanks for the tips on the books :)

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  6. We started a group using Block Party: The Modern Quilting Bee - lots of fun! I also just got Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters which is fab.

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  7. Mastering machine quilting on my domestic machine is absolute tops on my list of things to accomplish. "Doodle Quilting" by Cheryl Malkowski is helping me overcome my fear of messing things up horribly. Her method is so logical to me, but now you've got me wondering if I need this Elizabeth Hartman book, too! Your quilts speak for themselves.

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  8. Just took out from the library today, "A Practical Guide to Patchwork." Now I can't wait to dive into it.

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  9. I cannot believe you have only been quilting for a few years!! I started a long ways back and I really never referred to any books...hence my slow progress no doubt. :-)
    The Quilters Edge by Nancy Zimmermann gets a few glances. I did a few classes but seriously it was the Internet geniuses and encouragement from those such as your good self that encourage me to give it a go.
    Chubby bums...lol.....my daughter used to draw hearts that looked like flying butts....hehehehe

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  10. Thanks for sharing your inspirations. I love Elizabeth's free class on Craftsy for piecing backs. I didn't know her book tells how to sandwich them. Great tip! Natalia does phenomenal quilting. I had no idea her book was that great. FMQ is still pretty much a mystery to me even after three classes. I have trouble flipping the images in my head or seeing in my head what I want to do. I really need to mark my quilts, I think and that has been discouraging in most FMQ classes to the nth degree. Mark as little as possible. You'd think it would be a cinch for me since I was a math major, but NO! The geometry part was a struggle for me.

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