Sewing Books from the Library

I decided to check out some quilting books from my local library, but found them to be mostly very traditional. I wanted to see if I could get my hands on some modern quilting books but they were simply not in the catalogue. I picked up these two:

Denyse Schmidt's Quilts

Joan Ford's Cut the Scraps

I found Denyse Schmidt's Quilts to be great eye candy, with many quilts suggestions each that could be made using a variety of tones and colours (or all solids, or all prints). Here was my favourite:

I enjoyed the book quite a bit but I think there are so many pages of instructions, plus templates in the back, that having this as a library loan does not make sense. Maybe I need to add it to my permanent library.

The other, Cut the Scraps, seemed like it was going to be good. As I dove in, expecting great things, I discovered something about myself. Fabric is everything. I just couldn't get past the horrid (in my taste) fabric that was used to make the samples. I'm sure they would look great with different, more modern fabrics, but I hated the ones used in these photos. Here are some samples of what I mean:

I do not like mottled fabric. I like crisp, clean and modern. I do not like batiks (I know some people are obsessed with them) and I do not like a quilt that looks like it was made with every ugly scrap known to quilting kind. I was done with this book super quickly and have no intention of checking out another one. Scrap quilts can be beautiful- Sunday Morning Quilts is one example of a book that relies on scraps but uses the most delicious fabrics to do so- but this scrap book made it look like only ugly things will come from quilting with scraps.

Now I just need to get my library to start ordering more modern quilting books so I can peruse and buy the ones that I love!

Lynn (aka Buttons)