Martingale County Seat Quilts Book

I'm impressed by this book. At first glance, however, I was a bit turned off by the title because my initial thought was something like "Why should I care what a collection of quilts from some unidentified state's county seat looks like." A deeper look, however, caused me to purchase the book and I'm so very glad I did.The authors Julie and Vickie, it turns out, are the owner (Julie) and employee (Vickie) of a quilt shop in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Each month over a year's time, Vickie designed and made a quilt that was displayed next to a red chair somewhere in the shop to encourage shoppers to return each month to see what was new. This book is the culmination of those quilted projects.There are no bed-sized quilts or applique in this book. Each project is quilted using a meander.Project sizes are generally in the 60ish inch size. The cover quilt “Miss Honey”, for example, is 54” x 66 5/8”. (Wouldn’t you think they would have increased either the set-in block measurements or one of the borders by 3/8” to get to a whole number?!)Projects are for all skill levels starting with confident beginner. A brand new quilter is likely to be successful also; however, many of the quilts have a lot of seams to match since they are constructed using 4-patch, 8-patch, 16-patch units, etc. Also, eight of the twelve projects are set on point. That doesn’t make the quilts more difficult to make but some people feel a bit intimidated by it. (No worries though, the instructions and graphics make the process very doable.)Within the book, there are three star quilts. One of those quilts “Harvest Pumpkins” consists of stars inside pumpkins (very cute). The star points on two of the projects are made by creating flying geese using flippy corners (wings). The star points on the other project are made using hourglass units. Oh, there is another quilt “Betsy” which is a flag quilt that has Ohio stars in each corner and one in the center.Bottom line is that the projects are made of common shapes and blocks that are creatively combined and set to create brand new unique projects. Of the twelve quilts in the book, there are eight I would be interested in making. One quilt, “Ida Mae” (53.5” square) is made of 4-patch units used to create a two color 16-patch block. I think I may sew some strip sets, cut those into segments and then use them for leaders and enders when I sew other projects. That might be a fun way to create “Ida Mae” without even thinking about it much!As Martingale publishing is known for, the supply lists, cutting, and stitching instructions are thorough yet straightforward and the pictures and graphics are excellent.If I were offered purchase do-overs, would I purchase this book again? Most definitely YES!Lisa Bongean from Primitive Gatherings recently did a great trunk show (on YouTube) of the quilts in this book.

I loved the detailed instructions and beautiful quilts.

Livre très intéressant pour mes créations patchwork