After a few rctq people recommended this book I ordered it on Amazon and it arrived today. Where has this book been all my life? It is *so* inspiring - I really want to able to quilt like that. And although I'll probably never get that good I'm sure I can be a better machine quilter than I am now, and this book can help me do it.
It is incredibly detailed. There are eight whole chapters before you ever get to switching on your SM - about preparing the quilting area, the quilt sandwich, setting up your sewing machine, thread selection, and so on. Just from flicking through (standing in the hallway having ripped open the post) I have learned things, mainly from the "what not to do" photos which could have been shot in my house - how not to sit whilst you're sewing, how not to feed a quilt through the dogs (two different "don'ts" here, and I do them both), how to hold the top and bottom threads out of the way when you start sewing (yes I know you're supposed to do this but somewhow I never bother and then wonder why the "tails" get tangled in the stitches and make an ugly bunch).
And it has reinforced my unofficial new year resolution to use much more plain fabric. I'm like a magpie in a quilt shop. I make a beeline for highly coloured, highly patterened fabrics, and then I'm often disappointed with my quilts which are much too busy with nowhere for the eye to rest, my piecing is obscured, my quilting doesn't show up. So I'm going to buy yards and yards of solids, maybe I'll even make a wholecloth quilt!
I haven't felt this excited by a quilt book since I bought Jan Mullen's Cut Loose Quilts. Thanks so much to the people here who recommended it.