Turn your life’s stories into a quilted journal that you, your children, and your grandchildren will cherish forever. May Lou Weidman’s story quilts are beloved by quilters everywhere, and now she shows you how to do it yourself. 9 easy projects teach you the techniques so you can apply them to your own story quilts. Dozens of Mary Lou’s bright, happy celebration quilts are sprinkled throughout the book, plus she shares a gallery of her students’ work to inspire you. Mary Lou covers each step of the creative process, from drawing the initial plans through choosing fabrics and putting it all together. Learn how to expand your imagination and turn your own stories into dazzling celebration quilts. More than just a quilting book - Mary Lou shares her insights for living a peaceful, creative, and productive life.
Learn to incorporate treasured clothing into heirloom quilts without sacrificing your modern aesthetic. Stitch memories together forever with 12 quilt projects that are as meaningful as they are stylish! Modern heirloom quilter Suzanne Paquette shares the emotional, creative, and technical aspects of memory quilting through colorful storytelling and photography. Practical projects inspired by real families’ stories will help you celebrate love, provide comfort, and honor your family’s heritage. Create modern heirloom quilts! 12 exciting designs for memory keeping, with the stories that inspired them Learn tips for sewing with clothing to preserve the past and celebrate the future Make gifts for children, honor a lost loved one, and celebrate your family’s legacy “Susanne Parquette shows today’s quilters how to mix Modern with sentimental . . . The twelve quilts in the book are actual commissioned memory quilts made by Paquette, who includes the people and stories behind each quilt . . . Paquette walks us through the process, beginning with Memory Keeping: remembering, documenting, and perspective.” —The Literate Quilter
Here is an inspiring journey that provides a new way to pass on the gifts of family stories. Award-winning quilter, Mary Kerr, shares tips and ideas on how family memories can live on by creating contemporary quilts from vintage textiles. Repurposing rather than purchasing is the focus here, and through more than 100 images, quilters are encouraged to breathe new life into objects that would have otherwise stayed in the trunk or the dresser drawer. Turn feed sacks, doilies, and vintage clothes with their meaning and stories into lovely modern quilts. Complete with tips for the cleaning and care of textiles and copious design ideas, this is the ideal inspiration book for experienced and new quilters.
Scrapbooking and quilting are each two-billion-dollar industries. Combine the two crafts and you've got a collection that will fly off the shelves. A scrapbook gets put away; a quilt goes on display--perhaps framed and hung on the wall, or draped over the couch, placed right where everyone can see it. These 24 original quilts incorporate the same treasured photos and memorabilia that normally go into a scrapbook, but in a unique and unusual format. And they're fun to make too, thanks to the many innovative techniques that are both easy for a beginner to master and excitingly new to the experienced quilter. Direct print favorite pictures on fabric with an inkjet printer. Arrange images on the quilt to tell a story. Tea-dye material to make it will look antique, creating a perfect background for those vintage photos. Extensive opening sections on art and design basics provide a plethora of invaluable tips, from how to mix and match colors to how to use pattern and texture. (There's even a list of the 10 most common composition mistakes.) Quilters, collage artists, scrapbookers, and those who work with mixed media and assemblage will be thrilled at the abundance of breathtaking ideas on these pages.
Combine your love of crafting, fabric, and reading to create unique volumes for preserving your memories. The 24 projects feature a variety of binding methods as well as inventive techniques like transferring photos onto textiles.
“Exquisite content . . . This beautiful book will inspire anyone to venture into the world of creating your own pieces of textile artworks.” —Hot Brands Cool Places Our homes are full of treasured items from the past. Hidden away from view but never thrown away, they are our links to the special people and events that tell our story. In this beautiful and inspiring book, Tilly Rose encourages you to seek out your precious stash of pre-loved items and transform them into beautiful and practical textile artworks that celebrate the lives of your loved ones and preserve your memories for generations to come. Tilly shows you how to make 15 gorgeous projects, including cloth journals, lavender hearts, framed collages, wall hangings and miniature quilts. All of the designs have a story to tell and are made using a plethora of vintage fabrics, threads, lace, ribbon, buttons, beads, photographs and other found items. If you don’t have a collection of suitable materials at home, you can have fun sourcing them from online marketplaces, thrift/charity stores and flea markets, and try mixing them with modern fabrics and embellishments for a more contemporary look. The projects incorporate a range of exciting techniques, all explained through clear instructions and step-by-step photographs, including layering and collage, hand embroidery, transferring your own designs to cloth, stamping, appliqué, embellishing, patchwork, free motion embroidery and photo transfer. “[A] stunning book . . . I love that if like me you enjoy other crafts such as stamping, mixed media and papercraft, these can all be incorporated into your work and give you an individual look to any project.” —Postcard Reviews
Welcome to structured improvisation, where there's a plan in place...but still plenty of room to play! Learn three methods for sewing together rectangles, squares, strips, and even the tiniest fabric scraps to create new yardage; then use the resulting scrappy fabrics in a dozen dazzling step-by-step quilt patterns. Start by working with just one color at a time to get the hang of improv piecing. Soon you'll progress to mixing colors and prints in scrap-packed quilts that will give a happy home to every piece of fabric you've ever saved!
If you think quilting is too difficult or too complicated, you’re not alone. Cutting hundreds of pieces and joining angled seams can be tough work! But log cabin quilting—an artful and simple way to piece strips of fabric around a central square—is different. From the intuitive construction through the straight-line stitching, this style of quilting is simple as can be. In Modern Log Cabin Quilting, Susan Beal outlines the entire process from start to finish, including basic quilting how-to as well as extensive design, fabric, and embellishment information. Since all log cabin designs follow the same formula, once you master straight lines and right angles, any of the 25 projects in this book are possible. From stash-friendly designs like the Charming Camera Case to more ambitious undertakings like the Vintage Linens Quilt, there’s sure to be a project that will get you into (or bring you back to) quilting!
