Quilting Legacy: 12 Reproduction Designs from a Cherished Collection of Antique Quilts

For this book, the Shores, a married team in which she is a quilter and fabric designer and he’s a folk-art figuring designer, reach into their collection of quilts from the mid-1800s and offer patterns for contemporary quilters to reproduce using modern fabrics and tools. They present this era as a highlight of the quilting tradition when women made beautiful items from scraps during hard economic times to provide warm quilts for soldiers. It was a time when they utilized the newly available sewing machine to speed things along. Their book includes instructions that are well illustrated. They even offer readers guidance for hand-quilting basics, something rarely found in quilting books these days. Several of the book’s featured quilts make excellent choices for beginners. For example, there’s a pattern for the “Checkerboard, Nine Patch” (in two variations) and the “H is for Hospital” option. The designs progress as the quilter’s skill does, so the more complicated quilts include “Tumbling Blocks” (with a pattern that eliminates Y seams), the richly detailed “Basket,” and the expert level and unusual “Flying Geese Variation.”