Feeling a little adventurous? Learn how to incorporate bright, decadent fabrics into your quilts without overwhelming your design. Add fresh, striking dimension and texture to traditional or contemporary quilts with Lisa O’Neill’s original “sliver piecing” technique. It’s easier than it looks, so you can make your classic or modern quilt blocks really snap with colorful fabric splinters! Lisa shows you how a folded piece of narrow fabric—the sliver—is inserted into a tuck in the background fabric. Then the raw edges of the sliver are encased in the tuck, while the folded edge of the sliver is revealed on the fabric surface. You’ll learn how to get perfect points or super slim strips without fusing or paper-piecing. “Sounds complicated, but we are assured by the author that it is easy and has many applications both with traditional blocks and in creating your own innovative pieces. This is an interesting idea with lots of potential, especially for the quilter who enjoys a little freedom of expression.” —Fabrications Quilting for You Magazine

A quilting book like no other, Quilt Lab--The Creative Side of Science by Alexandra Winston is as cerebral as it is artistic. Extrapolating from ideas such as states of matter and calculus, you'll see scientific disciplines transformed into vibrant quilt designs. Each of the 12 projects, including 9 quilts, has a story, lesson, and idea that exemplifies its scientific design. The author also illustrates the simple "scientific process" of quilting with step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and hypotheses for customization. This mind-expanding book will encourage you to find inspiration in unusual places and learn something new!

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.

1 Great Fabric + 1 Block = 1 Stunning Quilt! • Brand new technique is all about texture, movement, sparkle, and swirl! • Choose hexagons or octagons-you're the designer • Easy random cutting! No planning, no fussy cuts, no mess-ups • Simple piecing with NO Y-SEAMS! Amaze your friends! Maxine shows you exactly how to choose a large-scale print, figure yardage, cut and piece these drop-dead gorgeous quilts. Big pieces and clever short-cut methods make these quilts go together faster than you'd think. Choose one of two projects or use the techniques in any size quilt you can imagine.

Ludelphia Bennett may be blind in one eye, but that doesn't mean she can't put in a good stitch. In fact, Ludelphia sews all the time, especially when things are going wrong. But when Mama gets deathly ill, it doesn't seem like even quilting will help. Mama needs medicine badly—medicine that can only be found in Camden, over forty miles away. That's when Ludelphia decides to do something drastic—leave Gee's Bend. Beyond the cotton fields of her small sharecropping community, Ludelphia discovers a world she never imagined, but there's also danger lurking for a young girl on her own. Set in 1932 and inspired by the rich quilting traditions of Gee's Bend, Alabama, Leaving Gee's Bend is a delightful story of a young girl facing a brave new world, presented in a new paperback edition.

Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson treasures an antique quilt called by three names -- Birds in the Air, after its pattern; the Runaway Quilt, after the woman who sewed it; and the Elm Creek Quilt, after the place to which its maker longed to return. That quilter was Joanna, a fugitive slave who traveled by the Underground Railroad to reach safe haven in 1859 at Elm Creek Farm. Though Joanna's freedom proved short-lived -- she was forcibly returned by slave catchers to Josiah Chester's plantation in Virginia -- she left the Bergstrom family a most precious gift, her son. Hans and Anneke Bergstrom, along with maiden aunt Gerda, raised the boy as their own, and the secret of his identity died with their generation. Now it falls to Sylvia -- drawing upon Gerda's diary and Joanna's quilt -- to connect Joanna's past to present-day Elm Creek Manor. Just as Joanna could not have foreseen that, generations later, her quilt would become the subject of so much speculation and wonder, Sylvia and her friends never could have imagined the events Joanna witnessed in her lifetime. Punished for her escape by being sold off to her master's brother in Edisto Island, South Carolina, Joanna grieves over the loss of her son and resolves to run again, to reunite with him someday in the free North. Farther south than she has ever been, she nevertheless finds allies, friends, and even love in the slave quarter of Oak Grove, a cotton plantation where her skill with needle and thread soon becomes highly prized. Through hardship and deprivation, Joanna dreams of freedom and returning to Elm Creek Farm. Determined to remember each landmark on the route north, Joanna pieces a quilt of scraps left over from the household sewing, concealing clues within the meticulous stitches. Later, in service as a seamstress to the new bride of a Confederate officer, Joanna moves on to Charleston, where secrets she keeps will affect the fate of a nation, and her abilities and courage enable her to aid the country and the people she loves most. The knowledge that scraps can be pieced and sewn into simple lines -- beautiful both in and of themselves and also for what they represent and what they can accomplish -- carries Joanna through dark days. Sustaining herself and her family through ingenuity and art during the Civil War and into Reconstruction, Joanna leaves behind a remarkable artistic legacy that, at last, allows Sylvia to discover the fate of the long-lost quilter.

Put a Quilted Star on Every Bed in Your Home! Make 20 simply spectacular star quilts featuring 10 different types of pieced stars. No fussing with tiny pieces! Large-scale quilts go together fast with Jan's time-saving techniques. Inspirational photo gallery of quilts by well-known quilters. You can never have too many star quilts, and Jan Krentz's latest book offers you a whole galaxy of big, colorful, pieced stars. Everything you need to succeed is here-from helpful advice on choosing the right fabrics, tools, and equipment, to step-by-step instructions for pain-free cutting, piecing, and finishing. Includes 5 full-size template patterns.

Two hidden valleys—one in Pennsylvania, the other in Virginia—held vibrant communities and quilting traditions during the closing years of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. How do the quilts made by the Amish and Mennonites in these tucked-away places compare? Includes photographs of richly colorful quilts, and of the two communities from which they come. "Full of bright color and examples of phenomenal hand-quilting, this book is great for your personal library or for a gift for a friend." —Quilting Quarterly "The elegant designs of these quilts give insight into the simple and unique lifestyles of their makers. Phyllis includes biographical information about the two groups along with photos of them and their work." —Quilter's Newsletter Magazine

Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.

"Fill their childhood with blankets they'll cherish!"