Monday, August 27, 2012

Book Collection- New Additions


I love collecting quilt books almost as much as I love collecting quilts, and in the last week I added four books after finding one book on eBay and three others at Powell's. "Cloth & Comfort: Pieces of Women's LIves from Their Quilts and Diaries" by Roderick Kiracofe is (I think) the only one of his books that I didn't have. So, I was delighted to find it at Powell's, used but in perfect condition. It's a lovely little book, and I can't wait to sit down and read it!



I found two other books at Powell's - "Treasury of American Quilts" by Cyril Nelson and Carter Houck, and "Erica Wilson's Quilts of America" featuring winning techniques and patterns from the Great Quilt Contest, published in 1979. "Treasury of American Quilts" is one of those classic quilt books, full of amazing examples. I'm particularly struck by how quilts by artists such as Nancy Crow and Molly Upton appear side by side with quilts from the early 1800s - and it makes sense!


The fourth book came from eBay, and I hadn't seen it before, so I grabbed it. The book is called "Kentucky Quilts and Their Makers" by Mary Washington Clarke, and it was published in 1976 - a few years before the Kentucky Quilt Project was launched.

I'd never realized there had been an effort to publish a book about Kentucky quilts before their state documentation. It's been really interesting looking through it, seeing what Clarke discovered, and seeing how it overlapped with the state quilt documentation. There is just one reference to the New York Beauty that I found. More about that later...

So, those are the latest additions to my book collection. At this point I've lost count of how many quilt books I've got. It must be well over 100, possibly closer to 200. What are your favorite quilt books, and which ones have you purchased recently?

4 comments:

  1. I just bought Jean Wells new book.

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  2. I have a large collection of books too. I love my books on quilting and fiber arts. I have Erica WIlson's book pictured above. A couple of other older goodies would be, "The Quilter's Women and Domestic Art, An Oral History" originally published in 1977, "The Artist and the Quilt", published in 1983, and a newer one from 2007, "Quilting, Patchwork, &n Applique, A World Guide".

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  3. I recently bought a stunning book called Turkish Patchwork published by the Quiltmania people. the illustrations are just gorgeous.

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  4. I like the state documentation books. At one time I wanted to acquire all the state books. Alas, times have changed and I don't do ebay any longer and don't buy books at Half Price Book Store as I use to. I think Half Price Book Store takes the quilt books that "they buy" and sends them somewhere as there are few if any "old" books on their shelves - makes the hunt for a goodie futile. I have hundreds of books that I enjoy time and time again - including YOUR book!

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