The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting

Recently I received a copy of the Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting for review. I’m not sure if you noticed but I really like to machine quilt! That is my favourite part of quilting . So not only was I super excited to have a chance to read this book, it was written by two of my favourite quilting authors.

I have known Angela Walters online for what seems like a long time. I first met her when helping her out with her blog way back in the early days before she even had any books. I soon became a fan. I now own most of the books she has written. Christa Watson came on my radar in the last year or so, but I quickly became a fan of her style as well.

Both ladies are wonderfully engaging and friendly. This comes across very well in their book. I love how they both tackle the same quilt top in different ways. I always wonder when I see a longarm quilt design how I might adapt it to domestic machine quilting, and this book can help with that. I really enjoyed reading their thought processes on why they both chose to quilt certain designs in certain areas.

There is an extensive section at the front of the book about tools and rulers, plus how and why to use them. There is also a section on the advantages of quilting on either a long arm or a domestic machine. I really appreciated this section, since I have been thinking about a long arm purchase in the future.

While this book does have quilt patterns, they are light on directions (two pages each quilt) for piecing and assume you have a knowledge of the basics. That was fine with me, because I need to get down to the quilting part! They go over how to do any markings needed and where they started on each particular quilt.

They even include a design for a wholecloth quilt. I was excited to see this, as a wholecloth quilt is on my bucket list. I will probably do this project from the book first, and combine techniques from both quilters to make it my own.

I would probably not recommend this book for a real beginner, only if you had some fmq under your belt and were very confident. I would recommend this for anyone who has been machine quilting and is bored with the same old thing. If you are wondering how to get those drool worthy designs on your quilt that you see everywhere online this book will help get you started.

I was provided an e-book copy of this book entirely free for the purposes of review. I like this book enough that I’m going to buy the print version so I can reference it more easily.