Customer Reviews

Fast Quilts from Fat Quarters

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My, oh, my. I had no clue how wonderful this book was when I ordered it.
My 14 year old granddaughter picked up the book last week and shared how
many she wanted to make out of this one. It's sew easy instructions and
the speed in which you can complete any of these quilts makes it a book that I'm sure to use over and over again. Can't wait to find time to get one or more done.

This book is amazing! Great use of fat quarters, easy to follow instructions, and very good diagrams. The design possibilities of the fat quarter cutting plan are endless, no two quilts will be alike.

I do love this book, but I'm a little sad that it says a fat quarter is 20 x 22 which is not right they are 18 x 22, but to me it doesn't matter much since I jsut use scraps of fabrics, but you can always just not cut out all the pieces if you have fat quarters. I do love the book though, made several quilts already

This book is based on the concept of cutting a standard template of blocks from fat quarters (20x22) and then designing quilts from the resulting pieces. Sounds great, but the quilts in the book are not made according to this method. In all but two cases, the quilts cannot be made from the pieces the directions would have you cut. The quilt designers "supplemented" their pieces, sometimes doubling or more the number of a given patch. So, while the quilts are pretty and the concept interesting, the quilts cannot be made according to the fundamental method the book teaches. A big disappointment.

At 120 pages, this book gives much more detail that many quilt books. The recurring "quilt gallery" displays different approaches to a pattern. This is a real plus, since it is hard to visualize the effects of change in color or print. The section on block patterns is helpful. Some quilters buy the Block Tool, a compact guide that fans out and displays 100 different patterns. This tells the piece size for each segment of a block.

Quilt projects included tend to favor more modern patterns and colors, although some traditional projects are included.

I bought this on the recommendation of a friend. I already have more quilting instruction books that I need or can ever use, but I bought this anyway. I am glad I did! It is well written, easy to understand, and has challenged me to choose fabrics and colors in a different way. It has endless possibilities for fast quilts that don't "look" fast.

They can never be made fast enough. The book is very helpful with some great ideas. Fat Quarters or scraps.

I bought this book because I liked all the different possible layouts using 8 different pieces. I failed to realize that fat quarters are 18 x 22 and did not get all the pieces needed. I used scraps to fill in the rest as the piece that I was missing was the smallest triangles. There are NO directions in the book on how to sew together any of the sections, not even the order in which the subunits should be sewn together. I had to refer to other books with similar patterns to put together some of the units. No information was given on matching triangle points, a tricky part of some of the blocks. I had to do some math to figure out the size to trim blocks and subunits. Most pattern books will list the size of each subunit so you can check your work. I think the book as wonderful ideas especially if you want to use up scraps. I plan to cut the various sized units from scraps and then play around with design to make quilts. I felt frustrated that I used 10 fat quarters and didn't get all the units I needed for one quilt.
A beginning quilter could not make these quilts. If you have made a few quilts and are confident with sewing units together especially triangle, this would be a useful book for design ideas. The cutting plan is OK but beware that you will be missing units because of the size of fat quarters.

This is an excellent book for a beginner, as well as being a fun "new" technique for an advanced quilter. I would suggest reading through the general cutting instructions first and scanning several patterns before beginning to cut. This is a different way to go about block piecing, but lots of fun. I am off to quilt camp with FAST QUILTS under one arm and a stack of fat quarters under the other!

I wasn't sure I needed one more book on quilting, but this was one of the best purchases I've ever made. Such great ideas to use fat quarters efficiently and make so many blocks so quickly after all the cutting is done. I can't wait to get started !