Happy Endings [Paperback]

Mimi Dietrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2011

The first edition of Happy Endings taught over a quarter-million quilters all they need to know about finishing quilts with style. Now That Patchwork Place's® all-time bestseller is revised and updated for a new generation of quilters! Discover dozens of creative ways to finish quilts, from easy to advanced. Find new ideas for quilt backings, battings, bindings, and hanging sleeves. Get creative with an entirely new section on quilt borders. Learn from Mimi Dietrich's expert "Happy Ending Hints," sprinkled throughout the book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland

Mimi Dietrich is a prominent appliqué expert, nationally renowned teacher, and the author of several bestselling That Patchwork Place books.

Also by Mimi Dietrich:
Bed and Breakfast Quilts
Baltimore Bouquets
The Easy Art of Appliqué with Roxi Eppler

Product Details

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Martingale & Company; Revised edition (March 23, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564775003
• ISBN-13: 978-1564775009
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent ideas on how to finish a quilt elegantly., February 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Happy Endings : Finishing the Edges of Your Quilt (Paperback)

As a beginner, I found that Mimi Dietrich book very helpful to teach how to finish a quilt. She presents several methods which are fully detailed and easy to follow. A must for every quilter.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I finally get it!, October 7, 2005

By 

A. Lear "battleaxe" (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happy Endings (Paperback)

This book helped me figure out, finally, how to make perfect mitred corners on my quilt binding. For that alone it was worth the price, but it has lots of other great tips and ideas, too, and I'm looking forward to trying those out. The directions are clear, and the diagrams and photos provide good illustration for those of us who are more visually inclined. This classic is a great addition to your quilting library.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fails to Deliver, February 17, 2009

By 

Ana Mardoll (United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Happy Endings (Paperback)

Happy Endings: Finishing the Edges of Your Quilt / 978-1-56477-500-9

I am an avid quilter, although I would still describe myself as a "beginner", even after years of quilting and several successful queen sized quilts and wall hangings. There's just so much to learn, I don't think I'll ever be a "master". One thing I am never really comfortable with is the edgings and bindings, and I figured this book would be perfect for me. Unfortunately, after a lot of reading, a lot of thought, and a lot of agonizing, I just feel that this book fails to deliver.

There's some variety here, and everything you see on the cover is delivered in the book, with gorgeous color pictures showing the end product and slightly less useful sketches that are supposed to detail how to achieve the product - I say these sketches are less useful because they are very small and it is often difficult to tell what motion/action the author is trying to convey. I think more sketches, along the "this, then this, then this" would have conveyed the idea better. It's an extremely slender book - why didn't they just add a few more pages of sketches and explanations? Or at least cut back the admittedly beautiful "final product" pictures to make room for the "how to get there" explanations.

Back to the material, the author has a definite bias towards "thin" bindings - edges that are less than half an inch wide and look very modern. I tend to prefer wider edges for my large quilts, but the techniques are probably the same. There are also curvy specialty endings, and different bindings with prairie points. Since I still don't feel like an expert at the simple bindings, I was looking forward to a detailed description with a "Eureka!" moment where everything I'd read in my general quilting Quilt books would suddenly snap into place. Unfortunately, I just can't seem to get that with this book. The descriptions are fine for how to attach a border (even I could have figured that out), but as for how to fold the border over, machine sew it into place, and not have the stitches miss the fabric entirely or wind up clumsily in the middle of the back border, this book doesn't detail. There's almost no instruction whatsoever for how to ensure that the back of the quilt looks as good as the front, and the fact that none of the author pictures shows a backside makes me rather suspicious. I'm not expecting miracles, but I'd like a surefire machine-stitch way to ensure that the back of my border doesn't look like a drunken stumbling path. Even using thousands of pins, it's still possible and likely that folds will catch or that a stitch will slip, and finding out after the fact is most annoying.

The best simple binding technique I have learned (from this book and others) is to sew the border onto the back side, fold the edges over the front, and then sew the front folds down into place. But that doesn't solve the issue of how to make the back look equally nice and straight, and the only thing I can recommend is tons and tons of pins. I cannot help but think there must be an easier way.

There's an awful lot of fancy binding here as well, most looking very modern and snazzy, although they probably fit the decor of a teenager's bedroom better than an adult living room. Maybe it's me, but these instructions are even more difficult to decipher and the diagrams are very confusing. There are very few measurements provided here, probably because this is supposed to be a "method" book that can be adapted for any size, but I would have welcomed some estimates.

I have a hard time deciding what to rate this book. I settled on three stars because the color pictures are pretty and somewhat inspiring, and I'm willing to believe that maybe I'm just too stupid to understand the diagrams here. But for me, at least, every time I pick up this book, hoping to master a new binding technique, I end up setting it down in disappointment thirty minutes later and going back to the basic binding techniques from my general quilting books. Shame, because I was hoping for more, especially from such an attractive book.

~ Ana Mardoll