Book review - Little Welsh quilts

I was very pleased to be invited to try and review one of the lovely crafty ebooks at Vivebooks.

Click on image for link 

The books download in an easy to use PDF format which is accessible by almost every computer, most phones and most importantly for me by the Amazon kindle fire.

I had the original kindle for my birthday 18 months ago and it changed my life. I know that sounds like a grand statement but I find it much easier to read on my kindle as it takes much less hand strength to hold than a book so suddenly after many years of struggling to read for more than a few minutes I was reading again! I went from 2-3 books a year to 81 in 18 months! For Christmas I saved up and bought myself the kindle fire. I knew I would use it for watching films, reading blogs, basic editing of my own blog and some web surfing but I was hopeful with the colour screen I would find the same ability to read craft books that I'd found with the normal kindle so I'm always looking for ways to get sewing and quilting books on my kindle fire.

I had the choice of downloading the book straight to my kindle or to my husband's laptop and copying across. I chose to download straight to my kindle although I have since copied the file across to my husband's laptop as a backup so that should something happen to my kindle I won't lose it. It was very easy to do by simply navigating to the vivebooks website via the browser on my kindle and choosing the book I wanted. The checkout process is simple accepting all major credit/debit cards as well as paypal then once you have checked out you click on the download link and the download starts instantly. It took around 7 minutes for my book to download but that will vary depending on the size of the file and the speed of your internet connection.

The kindle's inbuilt software will read a PDF file but as the book I chose had imbedded how to videos I needed a PDF reader with more features. Vivienne recommended the EZ PDF reader app which at just £1.23 I was happy to pay for.

Above is a picture to help you find the exact app I'm referring to. It is easy to use and copes with the imbedded videos in the book I chose brilliantly. 

So now onto my choice of book. There were lots of books to choose from but seen as I am Welsh I couldn't resist the chance to learn a little more about my Welsh quilting heritage and chose this book:

Click on image for link 

It is a lovely book that gives lots of history of Welsh quilting, patterns to follow and how to videos and I can see myself making most if not all the quilts in this book at some point. My favourite being this lovely quilt with fantastically detailed quilting

It starts with an introduction to Welsh quilting techniques, fabric choices and popular Welsh quilting motifs. The how to videos cover everything from the basics of how to join two squares together to how to mark out the quilting designs and finishing techniques. There are lots of lovely techniques with detailed photographs and videos to make all the new techniques clear and easy to understand. She even thinks to include photos of the backs of the quilts so you can see the detailed quilting without the distraction of the fabric choices. 

The book also includes easy to print instructions, layout and assembly diagrams and templates. I can see me going back to this book time and time again. 

Although I received a free copy of the above book all my opinions of both the website and the book are impartial and honest and I will definitely be purchasing books from there in the future.