National Book Lover’s Day-Quilting Style

For National Book Lover’s Day, Moda invited bloggers to share their first quilting books and books that still inspire them.  I love quilting books and have accumulated quite a library over the years.  It was fun to look through them and select a favorite.

This is the first quilting book I ever purchased.  Any guesses as to what it is?

Like many other people, my first quilting book was The It’s Okay If You Sit On My Quilt Book by the inimitable Mary Ellen Hopkins.

When I heard of her recent passing I thought back to the elation I felt at being able to actually make a quilt and realized that much of my excitement was due to the enthusiasm and charisma of Mary Ellen. She taught us that simple blocks, “kindergarten blocks” as she called them, could make beautiful quilts and ANYBODY could make simple blocks. She embraced the idea that quilts were to be loved to death and then be replaced by another quilt. That was all the encouragement I needed so I started making quilts, lots of quilts. Now, 25 years and nearly a thousand quilts later, my passion is greater than ever.

Looking through this binder was a fun trip down memory lane. Along with the book, there are class handouts from my first quilting classes with another quilting icon, Jackie Robinson. Other fun things in there are fabric swatches from my early quilts, ideas I jotted down for future quilts, practice drawings for machine quilting and more. You gotta love the country blue and dusty pink palette!!

After all these years of quilting, I still find inspiration in books. I love to sit down with a new quilting book and dream about my next quilt and then the next one and the next one and….

Recently my focus has been on donation quilts.  Kim Brackett’s Scrap-Basket series has been perfect for stashbusting while making some lovely quilts for charity. The piecing is not difficult and there is a variety of techniques so I don’t get bored. So far I’ve made almost all of the quilts from Scrap-Basket Surprises and will probably work through both Scrap-Basket Sensations and Scrap-Basket Beauties.  All three are great books.

So what quilting books are your favorites?  Do you tend to buy project books or technique books?  Or are you like me and buy them all?

Be sure to stop by Moda’s Cutting Table Blog to check out other favorite quilt books. You can sign up there to win one of six new quilting books!!

With so many great quilting books available I hope you can find your inspiration in one.