A layer Cake and Jelly Roll Mess

I was excited to get this Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintlott. The patterns while nothing new are pleasant and I thought nice to have a number of simple ones all in one place. I also thought it might be a good book to recommend to a new quilter. They often purchase these cuts of fabric to get lots of variety at a lower price tag.

This morning I decided to dive into the Charming Flowers pattern from the book. I pulled the fabrics from my stash, I was excited. Then reality hit. I had read the preface to understand what sizes, shapes and amounts were standard for the book. the first pattern talked about making 4 1/2 inch finished squares from the 5 inch charm patches. I have been quilting long enough to know that you cannot make right triangles that way. In the text of the directions you are instructed to cut 5 3/8 inch squares. That is ok if you are cutting from yardage but I thought the premise was to use the packs you buy at the quilt store. Sorry I did not see the 3/8 inch supplements to the pack when I bought them, nor would it look good to sew that on.

All right I will look at another. I skipped to Diamonds at Large. What a pretty quilt and since they are all right triangles, I figured we would not have the same problem. The directions tell you to save the 2 1/2 by 7 1/2 inch strip that you trim off to use for the borders and binding. Once again the math does not quite work. You will not have enough strips even if you cut the remaining 4 pieces from the layer cake stack.

Well I gave up after that. Any quilt book that fails so miserably at basic math cannot get my recommendation. It would make any newbie quilter tear their hair out.

If you are looking for some great straight forward patterns get one of Eleanor Burns books in at least the second edition.