I have 2 books to share today, Strip Savvy by Kate Henderson and Candy Store and More by Kay Connors and Karen Earlywine.

When I first looked through Strip Savvy by Kate Henderson, the quilts made me think of Modern Quilts.  I don’t consider myself a modern quilter (although you might not agree when you look at some of my quilting), but this book made me “look again.”  Kate uses jelly roll strips, those 2 1/2 inch strips, for all the quilts in this book.  Well, isn’t that a new take on Modern?  Personally, of all the pre-cut fabric out there, I like jelly rolls the best and have not seen them used in the way Kate uses them.  One of my favorite parts of her book, I hate to admit, is how she “collects” 2 1/2 inch strips – no, I’m not going to tell you… you’ll have to read the book to find out!  And, she tells how she stores her strips and small scraps that she gets from… yes, jelly roll strips!

Personally, I love Log Cabin blocks, so her “Ocean Waves” quilt was my favorite.

Her Butterfly quilt is cute.

And, here’s the back cover to get more of an idea of what’s inside.

To find out more about Kate Henderson, check out her blog at http://neverenoughhours.blogspot.com/.  You can buy this book here.

Candy Store and More by Kay Connors and Karen Earlywine is the other book on the Fourth and Final February review…

As I perused the pictures of this book before really looking, I thought the quilts all looked so authentic, like they had actually come from another time period, the 1930s and 40s.  I knew the fabrics were re-creations, but the patterns made me feel like I was in a time warps.  As I looked further, I realized these ladies had actually done a LOT of research for this book.  Their patterns are from old newspaper clippings that they have scattered throughout this book and from vintage quilts that they have collected.  They use the same color strategies, but twist them and turn them around a bit.

There is a quilt with embroidered butterflies on it.  Not only do they provide several different butterflies to choose from when embroidering your block, but they show you how to embroider the stitches.

I hate to admit this, but as a quilter, one of the most fascinating things I found in this book was how to actually quilt the quilt.  Instead of “quilt as desired” when you are done with the quilts, they provide examples of motifs to use on the entire quilt for these quilts.  Do you know how hard it is to find examples for quilting vintage quilts?  Our customers may pick up these vintage quilt tops and hope we can do them justice with our quilting, but if we don’t have a quilting design that looks vintage (even though we are quilting it on our machines instead of by hand), then I feel like we haven’t given the quilt the personality it needs.

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can find it here.

Photographs provided by Martingale, courtesy of their photographer Brent Kane

P.S.  This weekend’s post will be about Ibby’s quilt.  Wait til you see it!  I don’t think my quilting did her quilt the justice it deserves, but wait until you see it.  I doubt you pay much attention to my quilting, because she did a bang up job on it!  It’s gorgeous!