Inspired by Kim & Cirilia’s recent posts on crafty books, I thought I’d join in and talk a bit about recent craft book acquisitions. We currently keep our books in our hall closet, so I’m not showing a picture of all of our books, as it’s not much to look at, but these are the sewing & quilting books I’m spending a lot of time with right now.
The first three have been a great source for things to make for the boys and their friends. Growing Up Sew Liberated and Sewing For Boys each have great patterns and instructions for clothes for the boys. I’ve used one pattern from the authors of Sewing For Boys and really liked it, so I’m excited to jump into some of those. The Wee Wonderfuls book has great creative toy patterns. I am hoping to make a couple of the dolls for little girls in our lives and there are some great patterns in there for the boys, too.
The bottom three are more quilting directed. I have a feeling the Modern Blocks book will be a go to book for my future quilt blocks. It has 99 blocks in it and I would be interested in making almost all of them. They are also done in modern fabrics, which makes it very visually appealing. Playful Patchwork has some great projects using a variety of patchwork applications. It will be a great resource for me on these different applications as well as inspiration for projects. Finally, I’ve had the Practical Guide to Patchwork for a while and really can’t wait to make a quilt or two from it.
Part of what I love about craft books, even if I never make anything from them, is just the visual inspiration they provide. It’s a great indulgence to me to pull out a stack of them and daydream about what I’ll make next. I have way too many of them but I don’t think I’ll stop buying them anytime soon.
onestitchshort 
Yeah sometimes I just sit around for an hour or two flipping through my various knitting / quilting / embroidering / sewing / whatevering books. It’s quite the nice escape. 🙂
I have to pick up some quilting books — I haven’t made a quilt yet, but really want to!
I use my (many many) books mostly for inspiration, too. They’re like dreams, on paper. And since I pretty much make my living in crafts books, I’d be lying if I said I never flip through them with a critical eye every so often, which can be just as inspiring.
Ooh, Sewing for Boys looks interesting!!
I kind of feel like I have way too many crafting books. At least I know I have way more crafting books than I will ever have time to craft from. But maybe if I start looking at them as a form of escape and/or inspiration, I can quit feeling so guilty.
It’s the critical eye (that Kim referred to above) that really helps me…I like to look at all kinds of craft books and figure out how I can do stuff better in terms of showing directions, or taking photos, or whatever!