Book Review and a Give-Away!

Recently I have had the pleasure to read an amazing book called Finish Almost Any Quilt: A Practical Guide to Adapting Quilts to Finish as You Go by Marguerita McManus.  If you have been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I absolutely love Maguerita's book Crazy Shortcut Quilts!  I have taught her method many times in classes and everyone always loves it and the quilts always look amazing.  So, when Marguerita came out with her new book I couldn't wait to get my hands on it!

In her second book Marguerita explores more methods to finish your quilts using the quilt as you go method.  What I love about her method is that there is no hand-work involved at all!  Many methods of quilt as you go do a lot of hand trimming or hand sewing to finish the quilts off - not in this book!!  Her methods are easy enough for beginners to achieve success with.  Indeed, I have taught Crazy Shortcut Quilts to beginners and they have loved the method!

Since this book is self-published there are lots and lots of colour pictures that will really aid the reader.  Also, Marguerita has an amazing YouTube Channel with many extremely helpful videos.  Talk about great value!

In Finish Almost Any Quilt Marguerita explores how to quilt almost any blocks quilt as you go using a regular domestic sewing machine.  You do not need a long-arm or different sewing machine to use these techniques.  I think this is great because so many quilters get intimidated when they look at a whole quilt top and think they can't quilt it on their own.  Because you are only quilting one block at a time you can easily quilt the entire quilt, block by block, without struggling and pushing and pulling the quilt through your machine.

I teach machine quilting classes and many quilters would love to use their walking foot more if it was easier to maneuver the quilt around.  Using quilt as you go methods we certainly can!  I really like how Marguerita shows quilters that they can use their walking foot to quilt straight lines or gentle curves that would be difficult to do if you were quilting the entire top as a whole.  By quilting block by block it is easy to use your walking foot and let it set your stitch length for you.  On the other hand - it is extremely easy to work on your free-motion quilting skills when you only need to quilt a small block instead of tackling a whole quilt!

From the back cover:

What's Different from Other Books?
There are no patterns in this book!  It teaches you how to finish what you have and how to choose adaptable patterns for future quilts.  This book gives you permission to be imperfect, how to "make do" and how to fix and finish what you've created so far.

How great is that!  The book focuses on the method of quilt as you go rather than providing you with lots of patterns.  In fact, it picks up where most patterns/books leave off when they tell you to "quilt as desired" but don't give you directions to do it.

So, to top all of this off Marguerita has offered to sponsor a give-away to one lucky reader!  Want to win a copy of Finish Almost Any Quilt: A Practical Guide to Adapting Quilts to Finish as You Go?  This is easy:

1. For one entry leave a comment and tell me why you would like to win this book?
2. For another entry go and follow Marguerita's blog and come back here and tell me in the comments.
3. For a third entry Follow my blog and tell me that you do!
4. For a fourth entry go and "like" Marguerita's Facebook page for her books - it's a great page!

Each comment is your entry!  If you only leave one comment - you will only get one entry!

Also, please make sure that you are not a no-reply blogger!!  If you come up as anonymous then I have no way to contact you!  Make sure that you follow the link on the right side of my blog to find out if you are a no-reply blogger.

Ok let's do the draw on Sunday to give everyone a chance to enter!