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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

e:books: Batik Beauties, by Laurie J. Shifrin


















When I first learned about Martingale & Company offering e:books that could be downloaded, I was curious, but also a bit skeptical.  I must confess that I come from a long line of "book" lovers, where we enjoyed reading and having physical books in our libraries.  I even had a grandfather that was a book publisher.  While I've fully adopted computers and have fallen in love with the internet, I was a bit skeptical about wanting to have any quilting, embroidery or sewing books in an electronic format.  After all, how would I be able to get inspired when reading a book electronically?  Or how would I follow instructions to make a project?

Still, I was curious and wanting to research what the value proposition would be for e:books for quilting, sewing and embroidery enthusiasts.  To my delight, Martingale & Company recently offered a free download of an e:book for their fans on Facebook.  This free download gave me a chance to have a hands on e:book experience.

I was able to download the book "Batik Beauties", by Laurie J. Shifon.  The entire download process was very easy and fast.  Must faster than if I had gone to a local store, or ordered online via Amazon, or another source.  The entire process was only a few minutes and I was quickly enjoying reading this delightful book.  Thus, I concluded the shopping process was definitely easier.  Plus, I found the prices for the e:books were better priced than printed books. 

And, I do want to share my insights about this delightful book:

Batik Beauties is really a wonderful book.  Chapters provide insights to Quilters on batiks, basic quiltmaking techniques, and 18 different projects all using beautiful batiks.  There is an excellent use of pictures, as well as visual and written instructions.
 

The 18 different designs offer a variety of styles and are definitely fantastic designs for batiks.  But these designs, and  many insights shared in this book carry over to more than just batik fabrics. 

I really enjoyed seeing how this book provided various "how to" examples, insights on color & fabric selection".  But, as this book does focus on batiks, it provides great insights to help identify top vs bottom of batik fabrics, how batiks are made, insights on dyeing process & care.


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Batik Beauties, by Laurie J. Shifrin is truly a delightful book. I highly recommend it for everyone that enjoys batiks, as well as for those that simply want to get inspired with using colors and making beautiful quilts!

I also learned that e:books has many advantages over traditional printed books.  While the obvious is that you are taking steps to "go green" and save a tree, you also don't have to spend time finding space to store your e:books, or spend time to organize them.  And, if you want to have a hardcopy of a pattern (or pages) from the book, you can simply print out the pages you need.  Very simple.

My conclusion is that e:books are really delightful. From the better shopping experience thru the ease of viewing the book, easily on line, with search features, ability to enlarge fonts (or photos),  and flip thru pages quickly, the e:book experience is really very positive.  More positive than I ever dreamed. 

I hope you'll give Martingale & Company e:books a try soon.  And I hope you'll also try the e:book for Batik Beauties, by Laurie J. Shifron.

http://www.martingale-pub.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=52_0&products_id=990

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like a most interesting book! Thanks for the heads up.

Doris said...

This is really good to know...I'm a bit of a paper book lover myself, but your insight says alot...