One of my guilty pleasures is to go into a book shop and browse around, looking for both fun fiction and interesting non-fiction.  It’s not something I get to indulge in often (bank manager, space and time being the main constraints!) so I sometimes have to take it online, which is where I happened to find Quilts Du Jour by Marny Buck and Jill Guffy * a couple of months ago.

I loved this book from the moment I opened it, and I’ve been hunting down the other titles by this pair since in the hope to find more wee gems!

The premise of the book is that there are 6 ‘Appetiser’ blocks, which form the first chapter and have cutting and layout instructions.  You can choose to make a quilt just of one of them in an array of suggested arrangements, or you can go into the ‘Tasting’ chapter which takes each of the Appetiser blocks and puts it into a range of settings, such as blocks on the diagonal, or offset grids and several with large areas of blank space worked in.  If the Tasting options don’t suit, there’s also a section at the end of that chapter with a guide to setting options and potential quilt sizes make with them.  Finally, there’s a ‘Desert’ chapter where blocks and setting options are taken a step further with some different sizes of the blocks mixed in with the different settings.

The very first pattern that I saw in the book was what inspired me to make my just completed KLT quilt (hot out of the dryer as I type, photos on Wednesday I hope), specifically the range of layout options for the block.  I totally resized the block components, plus changed and added shapes, so the relationship may seem a tad tenuous, but trust me on this!

Here’s the quilt that goes with this Crudites block in the Desert chapter:

I adore how this book lets you follow the exact instructions, or lets you go off on your own, just as you wish, and the range of options around layout will provide no end of inspiration for other quilts as well, I’m sure.

* Affiliate link which gives me a couple of pennies if you buy a book, and lets me buy more books to review for you.