Friday, September 11, 2009

Quilt Inferno

Lately I've become increasingly fascinated with quilts and patchwork. The feeling has been simmering for a while, but I always tried to leave it at bay since I seem to have limited time for my currant craft passions (and limited stash space!) so I couldn't fathom adding ANOTHER such obsession to my life!

But then we went down to stay with Mum in her lovely new home, kitted out with so many of the gorgeous elements she always spoke of when we would talk about dream houses etc.. In the lovely guest room the bed was all made up with bedspread and such, and laid across the top of the covers was a beautiful square quilt. I think that was the spark that has lit my quilt inferno!!

My creation
1. Quilted Gelati Log Cabin, 2. The 'Forever' Quilt---Finally Finished. . ., 3. Detail of "Spot On" Circle Quilt

I've been having a little squiz around at various books and things, trying to find inspiration and, perhaps more importantly, education.
I'd like to have a few great books of colourful, textural quality magnificence to inspire me and fuel the fire, but I feel it's very important to get at least one decent book that will cover all the basic How-Tos, hot tips and so on.

After having a bit of a trawl around the internets, I thought I would put it to you, gentle reader, with your cumulative score of wisdom to share your suggestions of wonderful quilting and patchwork books and sources.

I'll be making this a little more fun, and encouraging the wall flowers out there to get involved, by adding a priiiiize!

I would love to hear your suggestions, so please leave a comment with firstly, your recommendation for inspiration or educational quilting/patchwork books or sources, and secondly what you love about that particular volume! I'll draw the prize from all suggestions received - and I'll try to cater the prize to suit the crafts of the prizee!

Let the inspirations roll!!

p.s. Forgot to give a closing date for prize entry! Let's say, have your suggestions in by the end of Sept 18th if you'd like to be in the draw for something lovely! But if it's past that date and you'd like to comment - please do!

5 comments:

Ann said...

Sorry, can't offer any help as I can't even sew. Good luck in your search.

bon008 said...

I can't recommend a book, but I will point you to a friend's blog:

http://stitchselection.blogspot.com/

She's just started sewing recently so I thought some of her posts on the books she has used to learn from might be helpful :)

2paw said...

Oh I love quilting, there's a display here in town, I might summon the strength to go now you have reminded me. There is a quilting 'Ravelry'. Not sure about what happens there, but it's quiltgroup.com.
Material Obsession has a blog and two books, but I did a course at Adult Ed and found that was really a great way to start!!

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love Denyse Schmidt's Quilts book - it's amazing. Very fresh and modern. Her website is dsquilts.com and there is this great flickr pool of photos from the book too:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/denyseschmidtquilts/pool/
Hope the links work!

eriven said...

I am feeling the same pull toward quilting and have become quite obsessed with the idea of my first quilt so I've done lots of online reading. I have even purchased fabric, just need to find the time and decide on the pattern :) You may know of these, but they are my faves so I post them in the hope they will help.

Oh Fransson! has some great tutorials which are easy to follow. The Mod Sampler especially is very instructive.

Red Pepper Quilts my most favourite blog for awesome quilting inspiration (which you probably know from the gelati one).

RPQ also introduced me to Fabric Shack who have $10 shipping to australia which takes about a week, good for fabric stash enhancing!

Sometimes Crafter also has some great tutorials, particularly on binding your quilt and some blocks.

Nine Patch QAL on Flickr - I'm thinking this for my first quilt, or the Mod Sampler.

Half Hex QAL - almost seems like cheating :)

You can get a 6 month trial of Down Under Quilts digital (mine seems to have gone longer than 6 months but if I love a pattern I buy the mag for the pattern templates).

QuiltGroup has potential, but it's neglected by it's owners and so it's still in very early stages.

Books ... I have Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts which has a good introduction to quilting basics and a range of difficulty in the projects. I like this book because it's not all quilts, so even if I never work up the courage to do a full sized quilt I'll still use it.

I've borrowed basically everything on quilting at my local and uni libraries to have a peek before I buy the books. While their collections are not extensive I haven't found one that I really must have. So if you do find the perfect book I'd love to know about it!

(That was practically a blog post of my own!)