Book Review by Beryl Snell
Pam and Nicky Lintott have put together several books for using jelly rolls, layer cake and charm squares. This book offers a varied selection of quilts to make. Instructions are easy to follow and there are lots of pictures to illustrate the steps for each quilt. There are some clever ideas for old favourites such as hexagons, pin wheels and tumblers. The Busy Lizzie quilt on page 78 is simple but bright and cheerful. For this quilt you could use some of those fabrics from your stash that you are not sure what to do with. To freshen the quilt, you could add several white squares to the mix, before you cut the strips.
One of my personal favourites is the “wonky star” pattern on page 70. This is a great pattern as there is no precision required to put together each section of a wonky star, which makes it a quick and easy project. I also love the unevenness of the star points. I have used the wonky star block for several projects. You simply cut the squares smaller – I cut them at 2.5 inches for my IPAD cover.
Wonky Star IPAD Cover
Sometimes I find the colours and fabrics used not to my liking. Don’t be put off a project by the fabric colours in a particular quilt. Use your imagination to visualise your own choice of fabrics and colours. Sometimes the patterns show more than one colour way, which is great.
Last year I was given a layer cake pack as a gift from a special friend. I spent a bit of time looking for a pattern to suit the layer cake fabrics, as I wanted something simple to show of the fabulous fabrics. Eventually I chose the galaxy quilt on page 14. This quilt uses charm squares, which are 5 inches square, so I simply cut the layer cake squares into four. I did not have enough layer cake fabrics, so selected extra complementary fabrics from my stash.
Layer Cake Feature Fabrics
Red Houses
Street Signs
The quilt looked like a simple project and the instructions were easy to follow. Ever one for a challenge, I decided I wanted to have diagonal rows of the same coloured stars. This made it much more complicated to assemble – I had to place the rows out on the floor before I sewed them together. However, I still got some wrong and had to unpick! It was all worthwhile, as I am very happy with the finished quilt top. I will quilt it with an all over continuous design.
