I am looking for book recommendations for a newbie.

With that in mind, what book do you consider your favorite, all time, must have quilting book?

Quick Quilts from you Scrap Bag, by Leisure Arts. Great patterns and instructions.

I've only been quilting for about a year now, but when I first started I was a YouTube fanatic! I have my inevitable collection of books of course, none of which I remember right now, but I learned more from YouTube at first than anywhere else. Just do a search on "how to quilt" and there are numerous free resources online.

Sounds like a conflict (and since you mentioned on another thread that you don't even own ONE quilting book yet)-

Can we reword that to -

>>I am looking for book recommendations for a newbie. What book do you consider a must have quilting book for a newbie?
With that in mind, what book do you consider your favorite, all time quilting book?<<

That makes much more sense to me.

For a newbie, I think "The Joy of Quilting" by Joan Hanson, is good solid starting book. As is "Start Quilting with Alex Anderson, 3rd Edition." They're not a lot of money - I'm sure you can find a used copy somewhere - but they cover the basics.

I'm not a member of the quilt police, but unless you're going to straight to fusing art quilts, you have to learn the basics at some point. Might as well be in the beginning so you don't get yourself tied up in making some advanced pieced quilt that discourages you.

Those posts show up all the time - people asking for help on a pretty complex design - and they haven't yet figured the 1/4" concept. Or, my favorite, they've bought a six grand machine and can't sew a straight line.

"The Art of Machine Piecing" was a great help technically - but not as a first book.


As far as my favorite quilting book of ALL time, aside from some GORGEOUS Japanese eye candy coffee table books, I'd have to say "Setting Solutions" by Sharyn Craig. It's the only quilt book I've actually read, not just glanced at the pictures.

And while it's over 8years ago, I use the ideas from that book in every quilt I make. I don't even think there are basic sewing instructions in the book. It's not that's it's complicated or advanced, but as a newbie, I think you should be figuring out why something went wrong instead of immediately going to a solution to work around it. If that makes any sense.

JMNSHO. ;)


Good luck on starting your library.

Check out ebay - sometimes a quilter will list a "lot" (meaning many books in one listing). You can pick up some good deals that way. ;-)

And lookie what we have here - including a version of the book I recommended.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Quilting-Book-Lo...item3a63cd3eab

hands down..............

the complete guide to quilting


it covers every topic of quilting and gives you step by step photos.

i've been quilting for 8 years and i still refer back to this book on a weekly basis.


here's a link


http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide...9706693&sr=8-1

I use "500 Full-Size Patchwork Patterns" by Maggie Malone. It has all the patterns but doesn't tell you how to put them together. I guess since I've been piecing for so long I can look at the block and figure it out. Still it's a great resource. I also love Eleanor Burns at Quilt in a Day. She has great free videos at www.quiltinaday.com

If you're a hand-quilter, Jinny Beyer's "Quiltmaking By Hand" is essential and will see you from the basics through to fairly skilled quilting.

The "Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Quiltmaking" is an excellent all-round book, fairly encyclopaedic in nature, beautifully illustrated, lots of techniques for both hand and machine quilters in it although it does have a few errors in it (e.g. tables for calculating QST sizes and similar are sometimes completely off), so watch out for that.

I really like the Rodale Quilting Library Series. The books are broken into different sections and each is well illustrated.

http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.de...&qsort=&page=1

MTS, you said it all. Too many "newbees" start the process backwards, then when nothing works right they ask the rest of us how to fix it.
As for my favorite quilting book, it's the one I bought last week, until I see a new pattern I want to try.

I like the Dummie books. I made my first quilt using a block from Quilting for Dummies. I also like the Idiot books, I have Quilting for Idiots too. I just love them dummie books! LOL