Lovely Landscape Quilts - a Book Review!

My book - Lovely Landscape Quilts - front and back cover

 I was thrilled when I found out that the magazine Quilting Arts reviewed my book.  A friend of mine scanned in the image of the review and here it is!  They gave it such great reviews that I was jumping for joy when I read it. (And then I bought a subscription, lol.)

Since this is my book I thought I'd share it with you and then I thought I'd show you more of what is in it.  

 *Insert shameless plug* 

I'm matching amazon's prices and selling it through my store. Click on the image of my book to the right of this blog if you are interested in buying it. 

Quilting Arts review of Lovely Landscape Quilts

 My book starts off with quilts made from strips by other artists. Ann Brauer's quilts are featured - there will be a link to her site below.  If you know my page on facebook, you know how much I like to share art quilts!

A few of Ann's quilts

 Lovely Landscape Quilts is finished with matte pages. (The pages are not shiny.) This means the colors in the images are more muted and subtle but the effect gives the book a warm homey contemporary feel. Many artists are requesting this finish because semi - gloss pages are considered out of date, or old fashioned.  I admit that I like bright shiny images, but everyone I've shown the book to has told me it is beautiful. (Including the artists in the first chapter.)

Here is another shot from the book. 

Chapter 3 opener

 I cover some basic design considerations... tips to help you design a successful landscape.

Design ideas, focal points

 I also include a bit about copyright and choosing fabrics. 

Finding Inspiration, fabrics and copyright law

 I show you a few things about creating landscape elements from strips of fabric, pieced and appliqued. 

Creating specific elements using strips

 There is a whole chapter demonstrating how I use a tear away foundation to piece.  Straight rows need to be kept straight and this is the one fool proof way I found to do it! 

Using a tear-away foundation to piece

 There is also a chapter on quilting so you won't read the infamous words "quilt as desired". 

Detail shots of how to quilt various elements

 This is another shot from the book showing you some of the chapter on quilting. 

Detail from the quilting chapter

 There are 15 projects in the last half of the book. They look like this. You can see the direction to lay out your foundation for drafting fold/sew lines, you can see the materials you'll need and you can see a fabric placement layout diagram to help you arrange your strips to make the landscape. 

Sample project

 OH! I don't want to forget to tell you that every tree and branch in these projects have a real size paper pattern in the back. No enlarging necessary - just trace on freezer paper and go! I was soooo happy that Fons and Porter agreed to add these!

I really want to thank all my contributing artists!  Let me show you a bit of work from a couple of them. The first is Coreen Zerr.  She makes the prettiest landscapes!  This is one she made from a photograph - and she sent along the photo so you can see it for yourself. 

Dawn Across the Straight by Coreen Zerr

And this is the photograph she used as her pattern. 

Coreen's inspirational photograph

Ann Brauer's quilts are tremendously inspiring!  She uses the quilt-as-you-go method to piece and wow her colors are awesome!  

 Late Summer by Ann Brauer

I case you want to see more of the contributing artist's quilts, here are links to their websites. (Some of the artists don't have websites, for example Reta Budd from Canada, but if you google her name, you can see her lovely work.) 

Denise Labadie

Ann Brauer

Karen Reese Tunnell

Marjan Kluepfel 

Coreen Zerr 

Kathy Schattleitner

Comments are welcome - I hope you've enjoyed this book preview or book review of my book Lovely Landscape Quilts.  Happy Quilting!