County Seat Quilts

Book excerpt: Featuring a dozen warm and cozy designs, County Seat Quilts is the culmination of a year-long quilt club at coauthor Julie Hendricksen's Wisconsin quilt shop, J.J. Stitches. Now you, too, can be part of the club, with a year's worth of achievable lap-quilt patterns. So start stitching, then get decorating--the quilts work equally well on a table, draped on your favorite chair or sofa, or as decorative wall art. Give traditional blocks such as Nine Patches and Ohio Stars a new twist by changing your color placement of lights and darks, adding an easy pieced border, or omitting a border completely. All of the patterns are easy to stitch; many are made with strips and squares. The most difficult thing about them may be deciding which one to make first!