It really didn't take me more than a month or two to read this book--I just never wrote down the end date. I recently picked it up again and reread the final section.

This book is all anyone needs to read: It takes one through choosing the design, fabric choices, colors, cutting, piecing, arranging, sandwiching, binding, and care of the finished project.

Beyer used to have a quilt shop in Northern Virginia, but she has evidently sold it. She also used to manufacturing template aids for cutting, but although one can find pictures of them on (even on Amazon), no one seems to sell them any longer. ( )

The only book you'll need if you want to make quilts by hand - and after leafing through this, you will WANT to make a quilt by hand! Perfect points, beautifully matched seams...what more could you want? This tome explains how to go about all aspects of putting together a quilt, how to choose and care for fabrics, how to draft your own patterns and how to piece perfectly every time. Written by the master of hand quilting, you will only really need this and maybe her book of block designs if you struggle to design your own, and you're set. Now go make a quilt! ( )

When knitting ceased to be my avocation and became my vocation, I decided quilting might help me to relax. A very knowledgeable friend (who is, in fact, a quilting professional) said that since I wanted to hand-piece, this was the one book I must have. I am so happy she recommended it.

My grandmother, who quilted all through the Great Depression out of necessity, used a needle, thread, pencil, scissors, ruler and a thimble. That's it. She was, and is, a sensible woman with a busy schedule. When I read three or four other quilt books before acquiring this one, their approaches - complicated, fussy, requiring heaps of specialized equipment and time-consuming marking and pinning - seemed somehow ridiculous. I couldn't imagine my grandmother, great-grandmother, or great-grandmother making quilts in that fashion.

Sure enough, Jinny Beyer tackles the nonsense (such as the practice of NOT including the seam allowances on hand-piecing templates) and puts the commonsense approach back in its place. She doesn't dumb the process down, however, and her suggested beginner's pieces are the only ones I've seen in print that seem worth tackling. So many other books insist a nine-patch is the only possible block for a beginner; if I'd listened to them instead of Jinny, I wouldn't have bothered to even try quilting.

The photography is gorgeous, and the directions are so clear that with no prior piecing experience (and only rudimentary sewing experience) I was able to cut out and piece a fairly perfect eight-point star after trying out a single Broken Dishes square for practice. And it's not because I'm some sort of sewing genius, because I'm emphatically not. It's because she's a smart woman and a born teacher.

If it sounds like I love this book, it's because I love this book.

This is a very advanced level book on quilting by hand. A great deal of time is spent on drafting the pattern as a preparation to cutting out the pieces. Then piecing techniques are shown with many pictures. Oddly enough, some patterns are so intricate with many points, making the hand piecing easier. The last part of the book is concerned with finishing the quilt by hand stitching. Appendices show how to use color to enhance patterns in planning a quilt. ( )

The best quiltmaker in the world! ( )