As some of you might know, I've just celebrated my birthday and I do like to treat myself to some new books in honour of the occasion :-) This year my chosen books were Tonya's "Word Play Quilts" (of course!) and a fabulous book called "Creative Quilting". Added to that, mum bought me Gwen Hedley's "Drawn to Stitch" which is full of innovative ideas to try.
The Creative Quilting book is all about Journal Quilts and is full of eye candy like this:
Together with a new home-ed friend, I am going to make a journal (8" x 10") quilt for each month of 2011 and this book is chock-a-block with inspiration. Each quilt illustrated has a brief description of the story behind the quilt, some with techniques used too. It truly is a lovely book and one I would thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in art quilts.
So, that's Birthday and Books...now on to Bargains. Each month our local library has a used book sale. I have no idea how they decide which books to sell, because I have previously bought books from them that seem in perfect condition. This month's bargain book was the best yet. It is this hardback book of Embroidery Techniques and Projects:
I have borrowed it from the library several times before and found it very useful, with incredibly clear step by step instructions for loads of different stitches, like these:
And I bought it for the princely sum of 50p. To say I was pleased was an understatement :-)
And now on to Christmas:
I have decided to join in with Allie's Christmas Through the Year Club - you can read the rules on her blog here. This involves making Christmas presents throughout the year and the incentive is, if you post pics on your blog of your hand crafted gifts by the end of the month, you get entered into a draw to win a small prize. I think this is a great idea and will save the last minute gift making panic that ensued this Christmas :-). The only problem is that a lot of the family and friends I might make gifts for are also readers of this blog. This limits me to the very young, very old and IT-illiterate amongst them...either that or I'll make some generic gifts and whoever posts the nicest comments about them gets them for Christmas hehehehe. How's that for an idea?
OoOoh those books look awesome, especially the one about word play and the the journal quilts, I have only just started out on VERY basic quilting techniques and am leaning towards hand stitching, but those books look very inspiring, I have added them to my wish list, thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteLibrary bargains are just a good as charity shop bargains! Don't worry about your letters, you'll get there in the end. Another way of doing Y is do a V, but the right hand slant has a long tail. Got it?
ReplyDeletewoohoo for the books!!!!!!
ReplyDelete