Encyclopedia Pieced Quilt Patterns EBook

You will notice over on the left that my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns is rather expensive as a used book. The paper volumes that I first published in 1979 are out of print. It was re-published in one hefty volume by the American Quilters Society in 1993. And again that print book is out of print.

I wrote it a long time ago---not quite this long ago, however.

You can now buy it a lot cheaper as an E-Book from AQS.

I immediately bought one. It immediately showed up as a PDF.

Here's the link at the AQS online shop:

It has the exact same pages (552 pages in all) as in the bound book.

There are over 4,000 drawings of patterns organized according to pattern...

With the text identifying the patterns by name with the earliest source for the name.

There are all the pattern keys, alphabetic indexes and information on the pattern sources too.

I am very excited to have it as I have often scanned a single page, but here are all the pages scanned and in order. I don't know what I will do with all that imagery but you will see it show up here.

I am putting a shortcut to the E-Book right next to BlockBase on my desktop screen.

What's the difference between the E-Book and BlockBase from Electric Quilt?

Here's the screen from BlockBase.

With the same patterns on a page in the E-Book.

The major advantage to BlockBase is that it is a digital program that drafts all 4,000 patterns for you---

any pieced pattern, any size---Paper pieced, rotary cut, template pieced etc. You can alter the BlockBase patterns by exporting them to EQ7 and then change them, subtract seam lines or add them.

The Encyclopedia digital book is mainly an index to tell you the pattern names. If you want to make the pattern you have to draw it yourself. If I were only going to buy one digital version of the Encyclopedia I would definitely choose BlockBase. It's so much more functional.

But I like having the e-book with the old-fashioned pages (even if my drawings were sometimes out-of-whack) because I still think in terms of a page format. It's just the way my brain was trained to organize things visually. I often look up a pattern in the book pages and then search for the pattern by number in BlockBase. You will want to use these two tools together.

Easy to click on information.

Easy to locate patterns by name, number or design.

Drafts patterns.

You can export patterns to EQ7.

You can use it with both PC's and Macs. EQ is working on a Mac-compatible version of EQ for 2014 but right now Mac owners have to do some adapting to get BlockBase to work on their computers or tablets.

You can keep the E-Book on your tablet or phone.