Craft Book Month

Hi all! I'm Amy, and welcome to the cute life :). I'm so excited to be showing you my craft book project this month!

I don't normally work from craft books, but after looking at preview's of Elizabeth Hartman's Modern Patchwork, I had to have it! It's full of quilt patterns for the confident beginner and up, and includes backing instructions for every project. There are a lot of quilts I'd love to tackle from this book, but there was one pattern in particular I saw that really called out to me. In fact, it's so awesome that a block of this quilt was just featured on Canoe Ridge Creations!

The pattern is called "Escape Artist", and I actually used the instructions for the pieced backing to create one large block for the front of my quilt. The instructions yielded a lap size quilt, but I wanted a baby quilt, so I simply decreased the thickness of each strip from 3" to 2" so that my finished quilt is 44" square. (I don't know why, but I saw the backing photograph and immediately saw a baby chilling in the middle of that grid!!) I find that shrinking or expanding a design is a great way to customize pre-written patterns.

Beyond that, I wasn't overly creative and used the same color scheme since I loved it so much! White binding gave it a great pop and I threw in a splash of the accent fabric just for fun.

Since I was using the backing instructions for this quilt, I needed to make up my own pattern for the backing. Not a problem! I simply mimicked the feel of the front with some offset 2" wide rectangles. The washing machine always gives it such a wonderful feel. My (nearly one year old) son immediately flopped onto it and started rubbing his face all over it. Silly boy :)

I was really happy to be able to find something I liked in a book and still make it fit my needs by tweaking the sizing a bit. When deciding if a craft book is right for me, I focus on whether or not I like the designs offered - the finished projects can always be modified. Quilt blocks you love can become wall art, a table runner pattern you like can become a journal cover, a placemat design can be worked into a cute tote...the possibilities are endless. There are a number of other projects in this book I can't wait to try, but the next one on my list is "Owl Eyes":



(Of course, I tend to think of it as "Hardboiled Eggs"...lol)

I hope you are finding lots of inspiration in this blog hop; I know I've seen a number of books I want to run out and buy now! Thanks so much for stopping by, and be sure to check out the master blog hop list here.