Quick & Easy Quilts: 20 machine quilting projects

Quick and Easy Quilts by Lynne Goldsworthy is full of a wide range of patterns, from the quick and easy to the slightly more complex. They are bright and colorful, and the photography and diagrams in the book are certainly noteworthy. I am particularly fond of the fact that each pattern is separate and unique from the previous pattern, allowing for a wide range of skill-building, which is more satisfying than some pattern books that only include variations on a theme.

After building a few of the quilt blocks in the book, I only have two complaints about the patterns. First, the cutting instructions are not always clear. It took me several readings to understand precisely what was needed for each pattern, particularly in some of the more complex blocks. I feel this was compounded by the fact that the book felt artificially shortened of pages, most likely to conserve printing cost, leading to instructions not being separated out as clearly as possible. The other problem with the book is the binding is entirely too stiff to photocopy the pattern pieces with any ease. The binding must be broken to get the full pattern pieces that trail into the gutter, and I feel the book would have been better served with a lay-flat binding or even spiral binding.

Beyond those two complaints, though, this is a beautiful pattern book, with a broad selection of quilts to attempt, and I recommend it for beginner to intermediate quilters.