Popular pattern designer Jenifer Dick and expert quilter Angela Walters have teamed up to provide 20 modern, innovative projects reinterpreting the Nine-Patch block. Easy to piece, aesthetically pleasing, and versatile, the Nine-Patch is an ideal beginner’s block, but also a favorite of more experienced quilters. Projects use a wide variety of techniques, from basic piecing and improv to paper piecing and wonky piecing. Each project includes detailed, step-by-step instructions for piecing plus quilting!

Popular pattern designer Jenifer Dick and expert quilter Angela Walters have teamed up to provide 20 modern, diverse projects reinterpreting the Nine-Patch block. Nine-patches are easy to piece, aesthetically pleasing, and versatile, making it an ideal beginner's block, but also a favorite of more experienced quilters. Projects use a wide variety of techniques, from basic piecing and improv to paper piecing and wonky piecing. Each project includes detailed, step-by-step instructions for piecing plus quilting!

In the Roaring Twenties, a detective must sew up a case of quilting gone wrong—first in the cozy mystery series. It is the 1920s, in the world of quilting circles. Alice Chandler, a wealthy woman and prominent local quilter, is murdered with a pair of quilting shears during the preparations for a local flower show, leaving a dying clue on the lap quilt she and the executive committee are making as the first prize. Unfortunately, the clue could point to anyone on the committee or any of her three adopted children . . . Connecticut State Police lead investigator Steve Walsh is on the case, helped and hindered at every turn by the Alice’s flapper daughter and by the scrappy reporter Julie Boroni. While trying to catch the killer, Steve’s bachelor life may come to end—but with whom? A classic murder mystery with a quilty twist, this historical fiction novel is sure to grab every quilter’s imagination and make them long for a bygone era.

The true history of a legendary American folk hero In the 1820s, a fellow named Sam Patch grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, working there (when he wasn't drinking) as a mill hand for one of America's new textile companies. Sam made a name for himself one day by jumping seventy feet into the tumultuous waters below Pawtucket Falls. When in 1827 he repeated the stunt in Paterson, New Jersey, another mill town, an even larger audience gathered to cheer on the daredevil they would call the "Jersey Jumper." Inevitably, he went to Niagara Falls, where in 1829 he jumped not once but twice in front of thousands who had paid for a good view. The distinguished social historian Paul E. Johnson gives this deceptively simple story all its deserved richness, revealing in its characters and social settings a virtual microcosm of Jacksonian America. He also relates the real jumper to the mythic Sam Patch who turned up as a daring moral hero in the works of Hawthorne and Melville, in London plays and pantomimes, and in the spotlight with Davy Crockett—a Sam Patch who became the namesake of Andrew Jackson's favorite horse. In his shrewd and powerful analysis, Johnson casts new light on aspects of American society that we may have overlooked or underestimated. This is innovative American history at its best.

Want to be a scrap quilter? Great! Want to think like a scrap quilter? Learn from a master! Lissa Alexander has spent three decades honing her scrap-quilting talents, and in her first solo book, she offers page after page of tips for making dazzling scrap quilts bursting with colors, prints, and textures. Learn Lissa's secrets for deciding which fabric combinations work (and understanding why others don't). Best of all, with a dozen patterns to choose from you'll discover how to (finally!) use your unique stash to make scrap quilts that sing. Includes a preface by renowned quilt historian Barbara Brackman.

“Do away with patterns and embrace your creative spirit with this vibrant and fun book.” —Quilting Arts With simple design principles, you can create unique improvisational quilts. Without using patterns, learn five easy piecing techniques for your improvisational toolbox (including circles, blocks, and strips), and watch the art unfold before your eyes. Focus on color combos and negative space to discover your personal style—and then add dazzling texture with free-motion quilting. Also included is information on hanging finished art quilts without a sleeve, plus tried and true improv tips to encourage creative play.

This edited volume documents the changes taking place in local community practices globally. Digital technologies and globalization have forced evolutions in how we go about producing and consuming journalism, and these essays empirically and theoretically advance the scholarly conversations about those trends. What does it mean to serve the information needs of a community in a digitized social world where so many of our ties – weak and strong – are at least partially maintained in virtual worlds? With authors and data from all over the world, this work celebrates a fundamental connectedness to citizens and their community and renews the emphasis on home as a mandate for any locally focused news organization. The contributions to this volume explore the "flows" within both digital spaces and geographic places that are an important foreground to any conversation about what is community today. Several terms are coined and explored in the volume, including "geosocial journalism" and "reciprocal journalism" that account for the essentiality of information sharing in global public realms to inspire feelings of community belonging. Other chapters include a review of Patch.com – one of the largest grassroots, digital platforms for journalism – a survey of how Norwegian community media organizations are adapting to digital worlds, how Swedish citizen sites operate, and the ethics of community journalists to advocate for their citizenry regarding digital matters. Venturing towards both optimism and dismay, the collection argues that understandings of communal borders have expanded. So even if journalists cannot reach the current locals (such as in Africa as one chapter relates) or globally transient locals, digital technologies can help relocate fractured community into a less problematic, virtual space. This requires commitment on the part of both journalists and citizens to preserve those connections, utilize those technologies, and exercise those fundamental principles of community journalism that go back more than half a century. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Practice.

Victory Quilts represents a look back in history to the 1940s and life on the home front during the war years. This book offers patterns and techniques for 20 blocks, each one representing a slice of history with a story to tell. The blocks are traditional patterns, popular during the 1940s era. Along with strip piecing, Eleanor teaches her techniques for squaring up triangle-pieced squares, appliqu, flying geese patches, and much more. Make a sampler quilt "set on point" or straight set. Each method is clearly explained and has step-by-step illustrations in full color. Ribbon and swag borders are explained in detail and add unique interest to the quilt projects. Same block repeat patterns are included in addition to a table runner, wall hanging, and other projects. Victory Quilts contains yardage and cutting charts for 5 quilt sizes, and the blocks can be made in either 12" or 6" size. The book has 240 pages packed with lots of extra projects. Templates are included in sturdy cardstock paper. Take a step back in history to the greatest generation and stitch your quilt in memory of those long gone days!

Day & Night will mystify, enchant, and entertain you. It is magical with no smoke and mirrors and the technique is awesome. The pattern is made from strips and the illusion created by using the acrylic template included in the back of the book. Eleanor Burns offers variations on making a quilt with two or three contrasting colors. By using three or four fabric strips, the blocks take on a whole new look.