Some of the most common questions I get asked around here are machine quilting questions, so when I was asked by my good friends at
F & W Media if I wanted to review Catherine Redford's newest book
Modern Machine Quilting, I totally jumped at the chance ;) And I have to say, if you are quilting on your home machine, this book is a fantastic resource!!!
The book is broken down into 5 Chapters . . . Getting Started, Walking-Foot Quilting, Free-Motion Quilting, Putting it Together, and Projects. Each section is jammed pack with lots of amazing tidbits on machine quilting and wonderful step by step pictures that really guide you through some of the quilt designs Catherine shares.
I love the depth that Catherine dives into for each chapter. There are over 20 pages on "getting started" and she even thought to cover such things as your Chair and the Lighting in your room and how those little things make such a difference. Ingenious!!!!
The Walking-Foot Quilting and Free-Motion Quilting chapters are just packed with so many wonderful designs. And the pictures and drawings make it really easy to follow. I still like to quilt my mini's on my home machine and I am super excited to try out some of the new designs Catherine shares. But I just had to share this. At the end of the Free-Motion Quilting section Catherine has these amazing words of advice!!! So true, so true!!! And don't you just love the idea of a "stitch vocabulary", what a fun way to put it :)
My absolute favorite part of the book was the Putting It Together chapter. I think one of the hardest parts of the quilting is deciding what is the "right" design to quilt. In this chapter Catherine shares pictures of her quilts and with each picture she adds the thought and decision making process of why she quilted each quilt in that particular design. It was so amazing to be able to follow her design process and incredibly insightful.
Catherine finishes out the book with 3 fun patterns that also include the ideas for quilting them. It is really nice to be able to see that part of "quilt as desired" stretched out so you can really get a peek into why the quilting patterns used where chosen and how it helps to highlight the design.
So, ya, you can say that I am a fan of this book!!! As I said in the beginning,
Modern Machine Quilting is an excellent resource for anyone who is quilting on their home machine and I am excited to continue going through it to pick up more fantastic tidbits on how I can improve my machine quilting ;)
I hope you are having a very Happy Quilting Monday!!!
See ya tomorrow with Terrific Tuesday Giveaway Day :)