Part memoir and part urban social history, Pieces from Life?s Crazy Quilt is an African American woman?s personal account of her life during a racially turbulent period in a northern American city. Raised in a black neighborhood in urban Detroit, Marvin V. Arnett begins her book with her birth during the Great Depression, and ends with the infamous Detroit race riot of 1943. Arnett?s close observations and attention to the details of her neighborhood and the complex adult relationships around her make this an understated yet powerful story of witness. ø Like the idiosyncratic pieces of a crazy quilt, each chapter functions alone but takes on particular resonance when considered with the whole. Choreographed as one-act plays, each chapter invites the reader into the life of the Sprague family and their neighbors during the years after the Ford Motor Company closed their Detroit plants. Arnett tells the story of her childhood with subversive allusions to the Victorian-era coming-of-age stories she consumed while growing up and the moral lessons she absorbed in such readings but could not reconcile with her own experience.

“With its diverse selection of fabrics and designs, A Quilting Life is a fine pick for any quilter looking to produce family-oriented keepsake results.” —The Needlecraft Shelf Bring the handmade tradition home with these charming quilts and home accessories. Inspired by a grandmother who loved to sew for her family, quilter and blogger Sherri McConnell gives traditional patterns like hexagons, stars, snowballs, and Dresden Plates a new look featuring fabrics by some of today’s most popular designers. Nineteen cozy projects include pillows, tote bags, table runners, and larger quilts—quick and easy designs that make great gifts. “Sherri’s book is a treasure! It’s full of fun and straight-forward patterns for quilts, table toppers, pillows, bags and more—all the goodies to make a cozy home.” —Thimbleanna “Would you like the opportunity to make tomorrow’s heirlooms in today’s vast selection of prints? . . . If so, this could be the reference book that will get you started. There are 19 projects, mainly focusing on handmade household items but including some larger quilts too.” —Fabrications Quilting for You “Beautiful inspiration if you are a seasoned quilter, but also a great resource with clear and in some cases, simple patterns for newbies as well.” —Diary of a Quilter “Color photos of finished needlework projects accompany step-by-step diagrams and assembly patterns, while at-a-glance sidebars covering materials and cutting allow needleworkers to gauge the complexity of each project.” —The Needlecraft Shelf

“[The author] presents her fabulous crazy quilt composed of colorful fabrics cut in hexagons [and] describes how to take each stitch.” —Publishers Weekly Nothing shows off beautiful stitching and embellishments like the blank canvas of a crazy quilt. Jenny Clouston’s gorgeously illustrated primer shows you how to make your own heirloom crazy quilts. Learn: which fabrics, threads, and needles to use how to piece crazy quilt blocks how to embroider with thread, ribbons, beads, and other embellishments how to assemble your blocks into a finished quilt, and more Included are complete instructions for over 100 embroidery, beading, and embellishment stitches; links to full-size patterns for nine hexagonal crazy quilt blocks; and 25 stitch keys showing proper stitch placement and thread and needle selection for 25 different blocks.

From pillows and throws to memory book covers and lampshades, Crazy Patchwork takes the theme of traditional crazy quilts and applies its principles to a whole range of ideas for gifts and for the home. Includes all the information a crafter needs to make exciting crazy quilt projects...in no time! All 20 projects can be easily machine-pieced or machine-embroidered and all use a range of brilliant colors, Many of the projects can be completed in just hours!

Turn family photos and mementos into quilted scrapbooks with this crazy quilting guide featuring 10 projects and 24 embroidery stitches. In Crazy-Quilted Memories, quilt artist Brian Haggard shows readers how to turn treasured family keepsakes—including photo prints, buttons, beads, and other keepsakes—into meaningful quilt embellishments. He offers a fresh take on traditional crazy quilt techniques, as well as 24 basic and combination embroidery stitches to create never-before-seen motifs. Each of the 10 projects featured in this volume will tell a story about your life and family history in unique and creative ways. Lovingly stitched by hand, these small, portable projects are destined to become prized family heirlooms for generations to come.

An original and unique process for designing and constructing improvisational quilts developed by Irene Roderick. This book appeals to beginning and advanced quilters who are looking for a new creative and artistic method of quilt design and construction. A handbook for quilters who want to expand their skills and make unique, personal expressions instead of following traditional quilt methods. The author's approach is fluid and intuitive, inviting you to tap into your imagination and ingenuity in order to create one-of-a-kind quilts in your own creative voice. The book provides instructions for design and construction accompanied by tips and tools to enable you to work freely without preconceived ideas of where the process leads. She will ask you to learn to trust your personal experiences and instincts so that you can develop your own personal style.

See it, stitch it! Thirty-five contemporary crazy-quilting stitches, photographed step by step. Rooted in the Victorian era, crazy quilting has a powerful allure for today's quilters, who use it to let loose and tell a unique story with fabric. Embrace crazy quilting with thirty-five must-know stitches and endless variations, shown in clear, step-by-step photographs for both right- and left-handed stitchers. Fine artist Sharon Boggon reveals design fundamentals to guide you in your process, so you can sew thoughtful, visually appealing blocks. Learn the theory and process behind this fascinating art: how to choose fabrics, piece stitch-and-flip blocks, and embellish seams with embroidery, beads, buttons, and charms. • Learn crazy-quilting techniques with colorful photos that show every detail • Combine fabric, embellishments, and thirty-five stitches, plus endless variations, into stunning crazy quilts as unique as you • Unpack savvy design principals to make order of the chaos and guide the viewer's eye around the block

Everything changes when Julie Riddle’s parents stumble across the wilderness survival guide How to Live in the Woods on Pennies a Day. In 1977, when Riddle is seven years old, she and her family—fed up with the challenges of city life—move to the foot of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwestern Montana. For three years they live in the primitive basement of the log house they are building by hand in the harsh, remote Montana woods. Meanwhile, haunted by the repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse, Riddle struggles to come to terms with the dark shadows that plague her amid entrenched cultural and gender mores enforced by enduring myths of the West. As Riddle grapples with her own painful secrets, she discovers the world around her and its impact on people—the demands of living in a rural, mountain community dependent on boom-and-bust mining and logging industries, the health and environmental crises of the W. R. Grace asbestos contamination and EPA cleanup, and the healing beauty of the Montana wild. More than simply a memoir about family and place, The Solace of Stones explores Riddle’s coming of age and the complexities of memory, loss, and identity borne by a family homesteading in the modern West.

"Doing things by the book" acquires a whole new meaning in Brandon R. Schrand's memoir of coming of age in spite of himself. The "works cited" are those books that serve as Schrand's signposts as he goes from life as a hormone-crazed, heavy-metal wannabe in the remotest parts of working-class Idaho to a reasonable facsimile of manhood (with a stop along the way to buy a five-dollar mustard-colored M. C. Hammer suit, so he'll fit in at college). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn informs his adolescent angst over the perceived injustice of society's refusal to openly discuss boners. The Great Gatsby serves as a metaphor for his indulgent and directionless college days spent in a drunken stupor (when he wasn't feigning interest in Mormonism to attract women). William Kittredge's Hole in the Sky parallels his own dangerous adulthood slide into alcoholism and denial. With a finely calibrated wit, a good dose of humility, and a strong supporting cast of literary characters, Schrand manages to chart his own story--about a dreamer thrown out of school as many times as he's thrown into jail--until he finally sticks his landing.

In Thomas Jefferson’s day, 90 percent of the population worked on family farms. Today, in a world dominated by agribusiness, less than 1 percent of Americans claim farm-related occupations. What was lost along the way is something that Evelyn I. Funda experienced firsthand when, in 2001, her parents sold the last parcel of the farm they had worked since they married in 1957. Against that landscape of loss, Funda explores her family’s three-generation farming experience in southern Idaho, where her Czech immigrant family spent their lives turning a patch of sagebrush into crop land. The story of Funda’s family unfolds within the larger context of our country’s rich immigrant history, western culture, and farming as a science and an art. Situated at the crossroads of American farming, Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament offers a clear view of the nature, the cost, and the transformation of the American West. Part cultural history, part memoir, and part elegy, the book reminds us that in losing our attachment to the land we also lose some of our humanity and something at the very heart of our identity as a nation.