Happy Flower Quilts: 30 Colorful Quilts, Charming Bags and Cheerful Gifts Paperback – December 13, 2016

This book has beautiful patterns with full sized templates/patterns. It is one of my favorite books and crafting authors!! I highly recommend for anyone who likes to do hand sewing/needle turn applique and quilting!

Atsuko Matsuyama surprises us with a colorful bounty of adorable projects in Happy Flower Quilts. Among the 30 projects are embellished yoyo lanyards (some yoyos are embellished with additional teeny yoyos), a drawstring lunch tote with its own cover, an assortment of small quilts with scallops, rick rack, and appliques, and of course, that lovely quilt on the cover with more than 90 small fussy blocks.Ok, so, there’s the adorable part in spades and to the nines.Effort. There will be much effort. Not just effort in piecing, assembling, and finishing. It also takes effort to find, read, visualize, and comprehend the instructions. As is customary with craft books in which Eastern art meets Western thought, the arrangement is product gallery first, then all instructions for all projects last. You’ll be flipping around a lot as you choose a project and compare text with pictures.There are also oodles of templates, patterns, stitching by hand, and many illustrations that might require a second and third look. The pull-out pattern section is quite elaborate. Some projects require 4 or more pages of instructions. Thought – and time - will be required.The quilting world moves rapidly, seeking always to speed up piecing and quilting. Happy Flower Quilts is a book for the other textile world: fingers are in constant contact with materials and every stitch is mindfully deliberate.

very challenging and refreshing to see new ideas. If your an experienced quilter and want a challenge yourself with combining piecing and applique this is going to be a book for you.

This is a nice book. Although I do like it, I wish there was detailed photos of all the blocks in the happy flower quilt. The projects are nice, if I was to choose I would have dropped a few of the projects for more photos of the quilt blocks. The projects are cute though.

Very nice collection of pattern. Love all the picture. If I never make any project from this book…I will enjoy thumbing through it again and again!

I thought about buying this book for quite awhile. I'm glad I made the purchase. It is a colorful book with some pretty things to make. The book has two pull-out pages with full size patterns. It is not a quilts only book. But it has around 30 projects, and some are quilts. It is my kind of book. But, if you can, have a look at the book itself before purchasing, to see if you would love having it, too.

I bought this for two projects, the sewing kit and the cover quilt. There are other projects I like, and the basic instructions go over hand piecing, which is very popular in Japan but not so in the United States. There are also instructions on how to sew in a zipper by hand, which I found interesting. The seasonal wall hangings are charming, and the various bag and pouch projects are nice. I'm tempted to make the tea cozy with matching trivet.Several commentators have mentioned the overall organization of the book, which doesn't bother me but I can see could throw some people off. It's similar in how some crafting magazines are organized, with the nice photos up front and all the instruction in the back.My biggest gripe with the book is the lack of a comprehensive listing of the different blocks in the sampler quilt. The text references photos but the best comprehensive photo is the cover, which is incomplete. The patchwork blocks are numbered (not in any discernable order), however, many of them are traditional blocks and it would have been nice to have the names of the blocks as well - I'm making a sampler quilt to learn, after all! The appliqued blocks are neither numbered nor named, and while some are easy to figure out (cherry, strawberry, bird), some of the flowers I am unsure of. For me, in terms of project organization this is going to be a challenge to sort out.The sampler quilt itself is a great introduction to many quilting techniques, including patchwork (some inset seams), applique, with a bit of embroidery. I think it is very well designed.I found the template pages in the back really challenging to pull out without damaging the pages. Maybe try using a hair dryer to assist.

Love the Japanese quilt books. They really know how to do detailed work, I am glad they came out with a copy in English.I just had a drink of whiskey. I hope I sleep better tonight.

Gorgeous book. Can't wait to make something. It's just a shame we can't get hold of the fabric in the UK!

Good read

Love this book so many possibilities to sew, can't wait to get started.

Beautiful book. Looking forward to joining in with the makes.

Beautifully illustrated book with all templates