Happy almost Spring!

I apologize for the lack of a library article last month. It got lost in the midst of my preparations to travel to Savannah for QuiltCon 2017. And then the wi-fi at our funky motel was a bit dodgy …

A big Thank You to Jo Ann Lee for organizing and running the library for the February meeting!

There were three new books in the library in February:

The first is an unusual book we were able to buy from Barb Mortell. It is the catalogue for Color Improvisations 2, curated by Nancy Crow. This opened in a museum in Germany last year, is touring Europe and will tour in North America next year. One of Barb’s quilts is included in the stunning collection.

We also received two lovely donations. The first is America’s Glorious Quilts. This a HUGE book on the history of quilts, with lovely big colour photographs. It covers many wonderful aspects of quilting, including Amish quilts, Hawaiian quilts and crazy quilts. I hope someone will take this book out every month because we barely have room to store it!

The other donation is another “text book” of quilting – Patchwork Quilts Made Easy: 33 Quilt Favorites, Old & New by Jean Wells. It covers many aspects of quilting techniques thoroughly and includes a variety of patterns. It’s an older book by a very talented teacher. I encourage you to look past the colour combinations and imagine these quilts in your current favourite colours.

Thank you to both of the donors! We appreciate donations of books to the library. I look through them all, and add the more current ones to the library if they don’t duplicate something we have. All the other donations will be sold and the money will go to buying new books. We are planning the next book sale at the June meeting.

For the March meeting, I have ordered four new books. The first is WALK: Master Machine Quilting with Your Walking Foot by Jacquie Gering. I took this class from Jacquie at QuiltCon last year, and she is a wonderful teacher. The book looks just as thorough as her class. She teaches how the get the best results from using your walking foot and much more than straight-line quilting.

No Scrap Left Behind: 16 Quilt Projects That Celebrate Scraps of All Sizes is the new book by “Crazy Mom Quilts” blogger, Amanda Jean Nyberg. It is an encyclopedia of fresh fun quilts to make with scraps. She includes some great ideas for fun backings and some smaller projects too.

Modern Triangle Quilts: 70 Graphic Triangle Blocks • 11 Bold Samplers is a new take on the quilt block – who says it has to be square? Rebecca Bryan has designed pieced triangle blocks to mix and match, as well as some fun ways to set them in to sampler quilts.

And finally, I ordered a new book from Amy Friend, Improv Paper Piecing: A Modern Approach to Quilt Design. It includes a primer on foundation paper piecing and a series of lessons and patterns that show how the technique allows a measure of control and repeatability in improvisational quilting. I think this will be very interesting to explore!

Thank you to those members who suggested books for the library! I keep a running list of suggestions and you can email me at librarian@lionsgatequilters.com to make suggestions or to place a hold on a book for our next meeting. You can browse our entire library catalogue at https://lionsgatequiltersguild.com/library/.

See you at the meeting!

Your librarian,

Paula