The Quilter's Library

I will admit that I love to collect things. Fabric, books, music, action figures,  beach rocks, shells, and other things that pique my interest. Today, one of the latest two quilting books that I ordered was waiting for me when I got home from work today: Ruth B McDowell's Piecing Workshop. This book was recommended to me by Elettaria, a member of the Quilting group over at LiveJournal, and I'm really looking forward to reading it at learning the piecing techniques she explains.

I also thought it would be interesting to list the other quilting books I've acquired over the years. My library is segregated into 2 rooms and a garage (my fiction library is still in storage). My home office contains my non-fiction and "research" library, and my sewing room contains my fine art and crafts books.

One of my favorite books is Gordon's 1000 Great Quilt Blocks. It's a small, square volume, but very thick. It's incredibly useful for looking up blocks and for getting desgin ideas. I picked this book up at The Quilt Patch in Fairfax, Virginia many years ago, and it's been an indespensible part of my library. I also like to sit and thumb through it, just to see the designs.

Dover Books makes up a big part of my library in many categories (their costuming books are indispensable for the re-creationist), and I have a few of their quilting books: Quick and Easy Giant Dahlia Quilt by Murwin and Payne helped me with constructing my Giant Dahlia quilt (that you can see in the quilt gallery slide show in my quilting website) - but I used the Marti Mitchell templates to cut the fabric. And I also have been inspired by the Complete Book of Seminole Patchwork in some of my designs that are still only on paper or in EQ6 projects and that are on my "to do" list.

Other inspirational books include 20th Century Best American Quilts, America's Heritage Quilts, Pictorial Quilting (also by Gordon), and Mandala Quilt Designs. These four books are not instructional, but they challenge me to "up my game." It's one of my dreams to be good enough that my work might be included in books such as these.

The quilting itself is where I have the largest room for improvement at this time - I think my piecing skills are getting good, as long as I am careful and not rushing. To help me with quilting, I picked up 60 Machine Quilting Patterns, Add-A-Line Continuous Quilting Patterns and Continuous Line Quilting Designs. These books have all been reviewed on my vox blog a little while ago.

I would love to hear your list of essential quilting books.