My Quilt books

I saw a photo on another blog a few days ago which showed some of the quilt books the blog-writer owned.
It set me thinking of my own collection of Quilt books.

Over the years I have amassed quite a collection, many bought myself and a lot gifted to me.
I have loved reading through them all, lots of them many times and I like to dip into them when I am looking for a particular idea or method of sewing or piecing.

This is the corner of my sewing room where I keep my books, ring binder files of Quilt ideas cut from magazines, my sweet jar of Perle cottons and plastic tubs of cut scrap squares and strips of various sizes.  As you can see, I use a bedroom for sewing so there is a wardrobe and bed in there too.

Close ups of the book shelves:

However I realised that actually there are 5 I use all the time. And here they are:

Sorry, for some reason the photograph as turned itself sideways en route from my Flickr Photostream to my blog!

Most of these books are never back on the bookshelf, they are on the bed with half-finished projects beside them.  In fact, I had to gather them up and return them to the shelves for these photos.

I love Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran books.  Their quirky style, wonky blocks and their liberated block ideas sit very happily with me.  Also, the use of so much colour excites me.  Freddie Moran's view that the more colours in a quilt the better and her wonderful notion that RED is a neutral colour are just great! When I first started quilting back in 1997 my use of colour was very restrained: three or four colours in a handful of different fabrics, in pale or quiet ( not as interesting as the recent craze for Low Volume!) colours were used in my first quilts.

Bit by bit I became more adventurous, colour crept up on me and then I saw some American Quilt Shows on TV in New Zealand.  There I met Freddie Moran, and that led to Gwen Marston.  I was blown away!  I even did a One Day Workshop with Gwen In New Zealand when she came to the Quilt Group I belong to out there.  I have never looked back!

I probably always liked the idea of Scrap quilts and using Freddie and Gwen's ideas I was able to make one Scrap quilt after another.

Then through blogs and Flickr I met Emily Cier's Scrap Republic book.  Her use of colour and scraps excited me too so that book is also in constant use.  I am currently working on two quilts based on projects in this book.

So, if I had to limit my collection of Quilt books to just a few those five would be an absolute must.

What are your favourite Quilt books and why?  I would love to know.