Infuse your quilts with love--how to add your personal story and more meaning to your handmade quilts. In Wise Craft Quilts, celebrated quilt designer and crafter Blair Stocker shares ways to use cherished fabrics to make quilts with more meaning. Each of the twenty-one quilts featured here gathers a special collection of fabric, outlines a new technique, and spins a story. By using special fabrics as the starting point for each project—from a wedding dress to baby’s first clothes, worn denim, Tyvek race numbers, and more—the finished quilt is made even more special. Create quilts that have a story to tell and you’ll find a whole new level of appreciation for what they represent in your life and the lives of the ones you love.
In 2009, Leah Day started a new blog, the Free Motion Quilting Project, and set out to create 365 new free motion quilting designs. Each design was published online with photos and a video tutorial for free for everyone in the world to enjoy. This book is a compilation of those 365 designs, and within it you will find a treasury of ideas and inspiration you'll return to again and again. - Find hundreds of filler designs to work in all the different areas of your quilts. From the blocks, to the sashing, and into the borders, you're sure to find the perfect designs to fit your quilt. - Feeling confused with free motion quilting? Get back on track with Leah's quick tips on everything from machine settings to how to prepare your quilt top and backing before quilting. - Build your repertoire of continuous line quilting designs by stitching a different design every day. This book will definitely help you break out of the Stippling rut! Inside you'll find a high quality photo of each meticulously stitched design. For practice, trace the design, or visit www.LeahDay.com/365 to find video tutorials for every single design in this book. While this is not a primer on free motion quilting basics, this book is a helpful companion and the largest collection of free motion quilting designs ever published! This second edition offers a spiral binding to help the book lay flat near your sewing machine. Challenge yourself to memorize - not mark - a new design every day for a year. Stitch the designs exactly as shown or play with creating your own variations. The possibilities are endless! See why quilters like you have called this book "an amazing resource," "just what I needed" and "the best quilting book ever!"
Master the precision and attention to detail needed for quilts—in sizes small, smaller, and smallest! In this book, author Donna Lynn Thomas teaches you the skills you need to create accurately pieced quilts in miniature. Choosing fabrics (with emphasis on print size), cutting (with emphasis on accuracy), sewing (with techniques for how to sew small pieces and tiny half-square triangles), pressing, and finishing are all covered in depth. Build your confidence and skills at your own pace with easy-to-follow instructions and a progression of twelve main projects, from easier to more challenging. Plus, each project comes in up to three sizes, so you can choose how small you want to go!
Zero Waste Fashion Design combines research and practice to introduce a crucial sustainable fashion design approach. Written by two industry leading pioneers, Timo Rissanen and Holly McQuillan, the book offers flexible strategies and easy-to-master zero waste techniques to help you develop your own cutting edge fashion designs. Sample flat patterns and more than 20 exercises will reinforce your understanding of the zero waste fashion design process. Beautifully illustrated interviews with high-profile, innovative designers, including Winifred Aldrich, Rickard Lindqvist and Yeohlee Teng, show the stunning garments produced by zero waste fashion design. Featured topics include: The criteria for zero waste fashion design Manufacturing zero waste garments Adapting existing designs for zero waste Zero waste designing with digital technologies
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
“These cheery quilts demonstrate the versatility of charm squares and will inspire quilters to make use of these popular precuts.” —Library Journal Mind your Ps and Qs . . . precuts and quilt blocks, that is! Popular designer Vanessa Goertzen puts charm squares to the test with 18 projects using precut 5” x 5” squares. Start with fresh, beginner-friendly patterns and build your skills to sew snowballs, stars, flying geese, and more. Using precuts from your stash or your own charms cut from scraps or yardage, you’ll learn tips to take the guesswork out of piecing. Modern and traditional quilters alike will fall in love with these quick, clever, and clean designs! “This book will certainly appeal to any scrap lover! You can use precuts or ‘shop’ your stash to create your own collection of five inch blocks—it is a revelation to see the variety of patterns than can be made from this starting point . . . It truly is a book you would want to give a beginner, but the quilts are so lovely that even more experienced quilters will want to make them.” —Down Under Quilts “An excellent way to begin quilting or to use charm packs.” —yarnsandfabrics.co.uk “You’ll learn how to transform the simple squares into Snowballs, Stars, Flying Geese, and more. This book, featuring both traditional and modern patterns, is a must-have for precut collectors.” —American Patchwork & Quilting
1 Great Fabric + 1 Block = 1 Stunning Quilt! • Brand new technique is all about texture, movement, sparkle, and swirl! • Choose hexagons or octagons-you're the designer • Easy random cutting! No planning, no fussy cuts, no mess-ups • Simple piecing with NO Y-SEAMS! Amaze your friends! Maxine shows you exactly how to choose a large-scale print, figure yardage, cut and piece these drop-dead gorgeous quilts. Big pieces and clever short-cut methods make these quilts go together faster than you'd think. Choose one of two projects or use the techniques in any size quilt you can imagine.
The Social Life of Busyness engages with the assumption that busyness is taking over everyday life by exploring busyness at work, at home and during leisure time. In a world where the notion of being busy is commonly experienced, and even expected, how should we understand the reasons for busyness?
