Customer Reviews

Great Sets: 7 Roadmaps to Spectacular Quilts

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3 star:		(1)
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This book impressed me for several reasons. Bascially, the book empowers you to take very simple blocks an make fantastic quilts. Think of the stacks of blocks that you have from block of the months, experimenting, or from UFO that you may never finish. This book will give you so many ideas as to how you can create your own masterpiece from your blocks.

When you flip through the book, you see that it is well organized into chapters that give you Sharon's different roadmaps. I am so looking forward to going back and studying each chapter to determine what I want to do with my blocks.

One theme throughout the book shows how you can take the same plain sawtooth blocks and create totally different layouts. These illustrations really opened my minds to the endless possibilities (I know this phase is over done, but it does fit here).

Throughout the book, she takes you through the process step by step. Also, in the back of the book, the author includes many tables to assist with the math in making your ideas a reality.

I am very impressed with this book! It gave me so many ideas that I had trouble sleeping last night!!

There is some overlap between this book and the author's earlier title, Setting Solutions. If you are only going to purchase one of the two, this one is more structured and the ideas are more fully developed. That said, there is enough original material in each book that if you love one of the titles, you will likely love the other as well!

This book contains surprisingly successful solutions to the following setting challenges:

- a set of BOM blocks that vary in size - sometimes by 1" or more

- an incomplete set of blocks for a quilt that no longer interests you

- a collection of mis-matched orphan blocks of various sizes (yes, there are solutions in this book for these blocks!)

- a set of blocks in a color scheme that you do not care for (yes, you can set the blocks so as to "lose" the original color scheme!)

and so on.

Some of these solutions involve setting your blocks inside another, larger block such as wind-blown square. This is very inspiring. Just think - you could do this with churn dash, lady of the lake or any other blocks that have a large central square.

This book is not only inspiring it is very PRACTICAL. Sharon shows various ways to overcome size discrepancies - including "invisible" methods that truly are nearly invisible - at first glance you would not know the blocks were not all the same size.

The settings that "lose" the original color scheme are simply amazing. I would never have believed that such designs could look good but they do!

If you feel guilty about your orphans, ufo's or unused block of the month collections, this book will help you make wonderful completed quilts from them.

This book is terrific for design ideas, or figuring out what to do with blocks from a swap or blocks you've made, but don't want to put into a standard straight or diagonal setting. Almost any setting from this book will enhance your blocks - Sharyn's ideas are all so wonderful, you'll be scrounging up old blocks to play with, and give them new life in the process.

"Great Sets" by Sharyn Craig has given me lot to think about! I know how many unused blocks I have sitting around my house, just waiting to be made into a quilt. After reading Great Sets, I don't believe that I will ever just make a plain sashing and cornerstone quilt again. I was getting tired of making them, anyway). Great sets has given me so many new ideas, that I can use a different idea for finishing a quilt top that I can now make each quilt differently.

First, Craig tells us how to make all the blocks the same size, so that others don't even realize you have. Remember all those block swaps! She then gives ideas for using colors in your quilt, whether to want to emphasize your settings, or make them recede, so that your blocks are emphasized. Craig gives seven different settings, but you could multiply that by 10, if you use all of her different variations and color quilt examples.

For me, Great Sets gets me out of a rut. Besides, I don't think you will see many quilts with just plain sashing win prizes in a quilt show!

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Labels: Great Sets, quilt designing, quilt settings, Sharyn Craig

I have had this book several years and bought another because I wore the cover off the old. Great ideas for those blocks of the month/exchanges. It does not have specific instructions for each quilt just a general "roadmap" for quilts. Not for a beginner, but intermediate to advance will get their juices going. Have made 6-8 quilts from this book.

I am a sucker for orphaned blocks and I love doing self-created "block-of-the-month" projects, so I always end up with some sets of blocks stacking up that need a good home. In my early quilting days I typically laid the blocks out in straight rows, added sashing and cornerstones and called it good. Then I learned to use setting triangles and put the blocks on point. I was amazed at the difference it could make in the look of a quilt. This book takes settings to much more interesting levels without making them so complex that you will lose interest in the project.

The first chapter introduces you to the basic principles Sharyn uses when preparing to design with a set of blocks. The next seven chapters each take one of her basic setting designs and go into the possibilities and technicalities of that layout. The chapters end with multiple color photos of a variety of quilts using that particular setting, with a little description of how the quilter accomplished the finished product. This part made me want to grab some blocks and start working, but I restrained myself. The ninth chapter showcases a few more quilts that were made using the ideas in this book. The final chapter gives instructions for 18 of the blocks used in many of the quilts throughout the book. A chart helps you make the blocks in either 6" or 9" sizes. This is for those who may not have sets of blocks to work with, but want to try the techniques applied in making the featured quilts. There are also charts and diagrams to help you get the proper size of setting and corner triangles, calculating the correct size for coping triangles, and other handy tips to make the process easier.

If you are a quilter who likes to buy a pattern based on the photo of the quilt and replicate it as closely as possible, this book may not meet your needs. But if you are someone who buys a pattern just for part of the idea and you are never sure how you are going to finish a quilt until you actually get there, this may be your kind of book. The possibilities are endless. I have several sets of blocks currently waiting to be used, but I have not been inspired before now with a setting that I felt did them justice. Now the difficulty is in deciding between several settings that have caught my eye.

Some quilt books seem so rigid and rule-bound that they stifle me. This book and Sharyn's other book about sets, "Setting Solutions," are refreshing in that they take a "you-can-make-it-work" approach. I feel like I have been given a new perspective on quilt settings that has recharged my enthusiasm for setting blocks and I won't have so many UFOs piling up around me.

Great sets is one of the best, most useful quilting books ever written. Sharyn Craig's [[ASIN:1571201173 Setting Solutions] second book about sets called Setting Solutions is also a winner. These books show you what to do with blocks that you already have. Maybe you made them or you were given them. Maybe they are different sizes or the wrong color? Sharyn shows you what to do to make a beautiful quilt out of blocks that you do not know what to do with. My favorite thing in the book is where she takes the same blue star blocks and shows you how to make 7 different quilts out of them and only one of them turns out to be blue. The woman is a genius!

This is a great book for any quilter. Helps take the mystery out of templates. Can make any size block. Purchased through Amazon and the service was quick and the book in the condition stated.

I was very dissapointed that Ms. Craig didn't include the pattern for the quilt on the cover but after many tries I figured it out for myself. You buy a book on line by its cover.

I ordered this item on November 10 and I still have not received it. The "no tracking information" doesn't help either!