The Quilter's Catalog: A Comprehensive Resource Guide

The Bee-All and End-All
The complete quilter's companion and essential resource jam-packed with information, supplies, expert interviews, techniques, community, and inspiration.
All the tools of the trade: rotary cutters, sewing machines, longarms, and design software; fabulous fabrics and where to find them; and if you're just starting out, everyting that belongs in a quilting basket. The online world made manageable with a guide to the most useful blogs, web sites, e-mail lists, free patterns, and podcasts. National and regional shows, guilds, and the best retreats and quilt museums. Batting parties, tutorials on fabric dyeing, and a breezy history of the quilt boom. Profiles of twenty top teachers--including television's Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson, Esterita Austin and her award-winning landscape quilts, and Ruth B. McDowell, known for her bravura technique. This is a book to help every quilter deepen and grow--keep it as close as your stash of fat quarters.

It's not your grandmother's quilt world anymore. Quilting today is a phenomenally popular hobby, artform, and business, often rolled into one, that attracts 21 million avid quilters who spend $2.27 billion annually on their passion. There are 2,500 quilt shops around the country, popular television series, guilds, Web sites, and national fairs--one in Houston draws 50,000 visitors each year.
Meg Cox, a former reporter for "The Wall Street Journal," is one of the obsessive new quilters, and in "The Quilter's Catalog," she draws on all her skills as a journalist to write the essential resource for contemporary quilters. Here's the low-down on tools: computer-driven sewing machines, innovative rotary cutters, longarms. New and old techniques, from how to dye your own fabric to cutting-edge digital photo-transfer. Profiles of the twenty top quilting teachers-- television's Alex Anderson, Esterita Austin and her award-winning landscape quilts, Ruth McDowell, known for her bravura technique. Who makes the best fabrics and how to find them. A complete resource guide to the best Web sites, online groups, books, patterns, stores, shows, challenges. And a look at the new world of quiltaholics: its sense of community, its opportunities for business, its controversies (hand-sewn vs. machine-sewn), its attractions--quilting is easy, portable, friendly, therapeutic, often profitable, and the perfect way to mark a milestone.
The book includes 12 step-by-step projects from key teachers--a crib quilt, bed quilts, quilted ornaments--and instructions on how to hang, store, or ship a quilt.