Don't let the cover fool you, modern quilters. Hands down, I believe this is the best resource book for machine quilting out there. You may never do trapunto or feathers, but even for your basic free motion stipple, this book will help.

Diane Gaudynski is the machine quilting guru. Award winning, she has every authority to speak on this subject. And speak she does. She teaches and blogs, so you can find more from her all over the place.

Her book is full of exercises, tips, supplies, concepts and trouble shooting. Whenever I am having a problem with something, anything, in my quilting this book is the first thing I pick up. I almost always find the information I need to solve the problem. Likewise, this is an excellent inspiration for technique and free motion ideas.

The book covers set-up and basting, important factors in actually enjoying machine quilting. Yes, enjoying. When it goes smoothly, machine quilting is actually kind of exciting. You see your movements, your efforts literally changing the weight of the quilt in your hands. For me, that is a thrilling thing in the process of creating my quilts.

It does seem odd to me that there are some actual quilt projects at the back of the book. Yes, they show off the quilting, but it seems kind of irrelevant. I would have rather seen more examples of quilting techniques.

I strongly recommend that everyone keep this book in their library. It is worth it.

Thanks to Elle for introducing me to the book in the first place.