Owned by Courtney Vengrin

First, I want to say I am not a quilter, but I am a fiber artist and teacher and have long, long been obsessed with quilts. I own a ton of quilt books for their inspiration and even own a fabric stash & a sewing machine, though I can barely sew. I want to be a quilter, but the fiber life has a mind of its own.

The book starts with the basics, explaining how to make a simple quilt (6 parts) and defines what modern quilting is, and what different people feel about quilting and modern quilting in particular. There's a lot of writing from lots of different quilters from all walks of life, talking about how they make quilts and why and how they got started. You'll reconigize some of the names included in the book if you have any interest in quilting at all.

The book also has gorgeous, inspiring photography on each and every page.

I enjoyed the improv section the most, which makes sense because I love freeform the most in my fiber journey.

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I like this book because it has a lot of design inspiration, but I found the formatting a bit confusing. Each chapter is prefaced by a sewing skill and then a bunch of quilts with information about their designers is given on the subsequent pages. I found it difficult to skim through to find the skills, and the ordering of the designers didn't seem to have anything to do with the skills. I would say keep them to two separate sections, or two separate books. ( )

2014
I am mentally designing a table topper...perhaps a runner and perhaps not...and have learned quite a bit from May's book. She touches on color and design, craft, tricks, threads, needles, putting the quilt sandwich together, and much more! I'm now moving to a similar type book and then to one devoted to hand-piecing and quilting.

2018
I read, I purchased fabric, I cut, pieced by hand, made the sandwich, basted it, and used a stencil to mark the quilting lines. During the process, I went on my area’s “Quilt Quest”—a tour of about 12 or 13 quilting stores within a 2-3 hour drive. A fun way to know who was where, and check out the “I’ve gotta have that” gadget! But I was too afraid to begin Quilting. In Feb or March this year, I took a class in hand stitching. It wasn’t a very good class, but got me over my fear.
Now I’m nearly finished with the main quilting, now thinking about the binding. Re-reading this book kept me inspired and I got much more out of it. ( )

Quilting with a Modern Slant People, Patterns, and Techniques Inspiring the Modern Quilt Community by Rachel May
I just saw the quilts on the cover and that drew me to this book. I have been saving fabric for several years now and want to start putting it into a quilt. I've yet to determine what pattern to use but I've read a lot of books about quilts recently.
This book starts out with the reasoning why the author started quilting and all kinds of tips to make the process easier. Now I know why they make curved pins! Love the process that they start out with, take things slow and practice.
The essential parts of how to start are listed. So many aspects are discussed by many through the chapters. The important thing for me was learning about the color.
The book is so well photographed I felt like I was in a quilt museum. The designs and patterns are so exquisite. So much encouragement and where to go for help.
Love all the hard work that went into this book. Now I can't decide, still which pattern I need for my quilt. The work is too beautiful for words. I am used to the traditional patterns and can find myself wanting to learn the new modern way also.
I received this book from Net Galley and Storey Publishing in exchange for my honest review. ( )