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Copyright-free Design Books


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I just discovered Dover design books. Thank you very much Cheryl Uribe for getting me started on yet another quilty thing to collect!!!!!!

How do you all use these books? Do you just use them for inspiration, or do you enlarge the images and print them out? Some of the books come with CD-ROMs also.

I got Decorative Ornaments and another one called Flower Motifs.

Jen :)

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I love Dover publications!

A $50 order gets you free shipping. The books range in price from $1.95 to about $30. Everything from Celtic (probably 10 books to choose from!) to Victorian, silhouettes, art deco and nouveau, flowers, birds, on and on and on.

My latest is architectural details from Victorian buildings which I am using to draft a center frame for a wholecloth.

I have quite a library and use them a lot.

An order will get you catalogs forever.

Thanks for the tip, Jen.

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Hi Jen,

For some floral designs I needed, I printed the design from the CD, enlarged it slightly to fit the space by scanning, traced over it to figure the closest to a continuous line, and refined it for ease of stitching. Sounds like a long process, but really only about half an hour. You can kinda look at a picture and see if it is a good candidate for a con.line. Then to get the design on the fabric,

1---either a home-made stencil ( I use Dawn\'s technique of drawing on construction paper, stitching through the design on my DSM with a larger unthreaded needle, and pushing pounce chalk through with a foam brush.)

2---outer edge of the design trimmed on the line to trace the outer edge and interior lines filled in free-hand with a marker or chalk,

or 3--- draw on tear-away paper to stitch over and tear off.

I managed lots of different sea shells from a Dover book simply by a straight copy onto the fabric with a wash-away marker. After you stitch three starfish or seahorses, it sticks in your brain and gets easier each time.

As for the wholecloth, I drafted an oval and will use the design for the frame by enlarging a few elements and using a light box to trace onto a piece of paper. I will only do one quarter of the oval and one full motif for the top and bottom center design. After I am happy with the quarter design, I will take it to Kinko\'s to have it enlarged. Then I will use that to trace the full oval on the fabric using a light box and mirror-imaging the design where necessary. Whew! I hope I wrote this so you can understand it!

I counted my Dover library and I have 22 books!

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I took 2 designs and combined them by using my printer/copier. I printed the butterflies and put them where I wanted on the floral frame then copied it on clear/transparency paper. I then put it on my overhead projector to enlarge it and traced it onto the red fabric. I layered the other fabrics underneath it and did reverse applique like Linda Taylor shows on her PBS show.

I love their designs.

post--13461899137418_thumb.jpg

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Jen you\'re killing me...I\'m sure if I head to the bookstores here I\'ll find a few more I need :P. I think I got 6 of them this morning and since I was over $50 I didn\'t have to pay shipping :cool: Now if I can intercept the package before hubby...my excuse is usually mental health but boy he is going to think I\'m ready for a rubber room for sure :mad:!

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Thank you guys for the kind words.

Linda I made this for my cousin. She is the only person I made a quilt for, when I first started quilting, that never took it off their bed so she got new one now that I better and have a big fancy machine. :cool:

It did me a good turn though to make if for her, she\'s the one that has since sent me all the antique blocks/tops & feedsacks as well as other antique fabric to make quilts for her family for money. It\'s her DH\'s family\'s stuff and I think that quilt convinced him that he could trust me with them. :D

Hey I didn\'t know I could get these books at B&N! I\'ve been saving the catalogs or waiting for a quilt show where they have a booth. Cool!

I know that there are some that are similar at Joanns, I can\'t think of the brand name. I think those are what I used for the floral frame on that one.

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After reading this thread I jumped over to Dover Publications and now have 7 books/cds on order. I promised myself that I wouldn\'t spend any money on quilt related items this month. What a joke that went out the window in about 3 seconds. DB

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I have several of dovers books on historical ornament (like iron fences) that get me thinking about doing a wholecloth. I have a bunch of different ones. I love them:P I recently put a rose (times 36) in the middle of the carpenter wheels on a king-size quilt by tracing the design after sizing it onto golden threads paper and stitching through the paper. I bought this nifty gizmo called an elmer\'s sticky dot dispenser. you just press down and a little tacky dot appears on the paper, then it sticks wherever you want the paper to the quilt top and comes right off when you are done sewing. For the small center sections I used regular wide masking tape to pull the paper out worked like a champ!! I\'m still paranoid about marking on somebody elses quilts. Another cool thing is Dover\'s "Sampler of the Week" newsletter on their website. They send an email once a week with a bunch of samples from various books that you can download and save to your computer. but watch out, :D It sure makes it easy to BUY more books.

later folks mwl !!:)

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