505 Quilt Blocks: Plus 36 Beautiful Projects (Better Homes and Gardens(r))

Rating:
Summary: nice for someone who likes to look at pictures of quilts
Review: First of all, I am an experienced quilter who wanted some new ideas. This book has beautiful pictures. Most of the blocks are applique, and only 30 are actual projects, mostly not quilts! But my main gripe is that there are no measurements for the piecing. So if you wanted to make a square you see, you would have to either sit down and work math for a while, or you could trace the diagram that some blocks have (not all designs have a diagram) and add a 1/4 inch on each side, but then your blocks would be quite small. I was very excited when I ordered this book, and very disappointed when I recieved it, I am sending it back tomorrow. good luck, I am ordering Nancy Martin's 365 quilt blocks today, hopefully that is better.

Rating:
Summary: nice for someone who likes to look at pictures of quilts
Review: First of all, I am an experienced quilter who wanted some new ideas. This book has beautiful pictures. Most of the blocks are applique, and only 30 are actual projects, mostly not quilts! But my main gripe is that there are no measurements for the piecing. So if you wanted to make a square you see, you would have to either sit down and work math for a while, or you could trace the diagram that some blocks have (not all designs have a diagram) and add a 1/4 inch on each side, but then your blocks would be quite small. I was very excited when I ordered this book, and very disappointed when I recieved it, I am sending it back tomorrow. good luck, I am ordering Nancy Martin's 365 quilt blocks today, hopefully that is better.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing ideas
Review: I am not highly experienced or a complete amateur at quilting blocks, so I speak from that amount of knowledge. This book is filled with amazing ideas. I have more quilting books than I care to admit but this will be the one I use over and over. It gives ideas for just about any quilt block you could want, flowers, sports, alphabet, months of the year, shoes to flat tops. No quilters library should be without this book. You can't go wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Good Ideas, but not for the beginner
Review: This book has a lot of wonderful blocks, but there lacks the directions to be easy to use for a beginner. All the patterns are on the same page as the picture with basic construction directions. There is 2 patterns to a page. There are a lot of both pieced and appliquéd designs. All the patterns are for 4 inch blocks. They can easily be enlarged, but the smaller designs allow for smaller projects, something that can be hard to find. I love the book, but beginners beware.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Addition to the Quilt Library
Review: This shouldn't be your only quilting book, and it probably shouldn't be your first quilting book, but it is a very handy addition to a quilter's bookshelf.
Like all Better Homes and Gardens books, it is well designed and beautifully photographed, very accurate, and practical. There are more pictorial quilts (both pieced and applique) than there are traditional blocks.They are organized in categories (holidays, trees, retro, etc.) so that you can easily grab this book and find a block for a particular need. For some reason, the traditional blocks are given nontraditional names, so it can be hard to find a particular design in this category.
Blocks are only occasionally shown in settings, but each is presented with a photograph and a good diagram that clearly shows all the pieces and the order of construction.
Each block is given in a 4" size, and in a traditional way (that is, you have to make templates and add the seam allowance you prefer when you use the templates). You have to be able to do the math yourself if you want to change the size. However, I made the "Linked Squares" design with 12" blocks with no difficulty. A good quilting ruler helps with this. Experienced quilters who like to do quick cutting and paper foundation piecing shouldn't have trouble adapting these patterns to those techniques, but all the instructions are traditional. They are good, clear, instructions, though, including directions to calculate yardage and make templates.
Most of the projects -- as distinct from the blocks themselves -- use just a few blocks. I liked that; they give you ideas for things to do with practice blocks, or with that block that turned out not to be enjoyable enough to use for an entire quilt, not to mention nice quick gifts. I also appreciated the variety of styles. You could make dozens of small projects and quilts from this book without feeling that you were doing the same thing over and over.
Overall, this is a nice, useful quilt book.