Quilt Book Review: Charm School

I was wading through my email trying to delete as many emails as I could when I came across an email from C&T Publishing.  They were announcing releases.  I looked at the date of the email and it was from August.  I had never opened it.  Oops.  I was just going to delete it as after all, if hadn’t worried about it in all this time, I probably didn’t need to bother opening it.  Curiosity got the best of me and I opened it.

I’m glad I did as this lovely book to review was in the email…Charm School:  18 Quilts from 5″ Squares by Vanessa Goertzen.

I initially thought woo-who….another charm pack book.  Hasn’t that been done?

Well it has been done.  It’s been done many times.  But if you are a good designer and make great quilts, it doesn’t really matter if it’s been done before.  I actually was surprised by the designs and had a great time paging through.



Of course, as always, C&T Publishing doesn’t show you the good stuff in the pictures they send to me to use in my review post.  So I got out my camera and took a few low quality pictures on the computer screen.  Here they are….First off…every “chapter” in the book features a way to cut a charm square and then shows several quilts that are made from that way of cutting.  Here they show a square.

I really liked this quilt….
and this one….
I liked this one too.
…but my favorite was this one.  The butterflies are so cute.  I would love to make my granddaughter Lucy this quilt if she likes it once she’s older.  I’ve do my own twist though…maybe some Kaffe fabric for the border??
This one was fun too.
All of the quilts in the book are larger throws, just under twin sized.  I was impressed that 18 quilts were included.  That’s a lot of bang for your buck.

One thing I wasn’t really impressed about is that the majority of the quilts use 3 charm packs.  I don’t know about you, but if I remember back to how I bought charm packs, I never bought three.  I only bought two.  The book does give the option of using fat quarters as well.  Me, I think I would junk the whole idea of charm packs and just use my own scraps….but we all know me and I’m a scrappy girl.

Another think I liked about the book is that the quilts went from easy to hard.  This would be a great book to gift to someone who is just starting quilting.  One could start with the easier quilts and work to the end where the butterfly quilt and the last quilt are.  I think a new quilter would appreciate the procession in difficulty that the book shows.

Overall I was really impressed with the book.  I recommend checking it out.

You can find the book HERE on Amazon or HERE at C&T Publishing.  I reviews a different book Jelly Filled, by the same author.  You can find that review HERE.