From Quiltersreview.com

I love quilts with houses. It must be the comfort of home combined with the comfort of a quilt that attracts me so strongly. Down in the Valley is filled with whimsical quilted house projects that create that strong magnetism for me. These are not your typical buildings! Cori Derksen and Myra Harder combine their talents to create four unique and distinctive neighborhood designs.

Prairieland, the book's first design, is about big skies and rural buildings with evergreens. These easy paper-pieced patterns surround easy strip-pieced centers, giving the feeling of a village surrounding a common area. Myra created another project for the book. Mountain Folk represents the imaginary village of Boon Docks. The patterns in this section display lots of whimsy, as the trees and buildings are tipped and leaning. The Mountain Folk patterns are still easy, though they contain more pieces and more sections than the Prairieland patterns. I like Mountain Folk because the patterns don't have that static feel you get in many paper-pieced designs. The trees seem to sway and the houses lean, giving the scene lots of movement.

My favorite neighborhood is Main Street, which represents the heart of a small town. Charming buildings, including store fronts in many colors and a white church, remind me of New England at its most charming. Venturing even farther afield, Cabin Country brings you rustic cabins in the deep woods. If my husband Charlie could move right into one of these scenes, I think he would.

Down in the Valley contains little text and many patterns, most of which are the same size for easy combining. Cori and Myra explain the basics of paper-piecing, with some good tips for keeping your work aligned properly. And they tell you how to easily remove the paper. Cori and Myra also cover finishing techniques, including sleeves and tabs for hanging your projects. They illustrate my favorite method for mitering the ends of the binding by cutting a notch in the seam allowance and lining up the notches. Of all the methods I've tried for mitered binding ends, this is the easiest to do and gets wonderful results.

If you like houses and trees on quilts as much as I do, you'll find wall hangings, pillows, and place mats made from these cute little village scenes a cozy addition to your home.

From New Zealand Quilter magazine

From steeped churches to rustic log cabins, you can mix and match your streetscape.

Cori Derksen and Myra Harder are the authors of several popular Martingale & Company books. Their designs have also appeared in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Together they sell their patterns through their company, Blue Meadow Designs.

Myra Harder has been working in the quilting and textile industry for over two decades and has found herself on the same path as her forefathers: her family ties can be traced back nine generations to fabric merchants in Prussia in the mid 1600s. She hopes to continue producing new ideas to inspire the next generation.

Myra loves designing both quilts and fabric, and her quilt patterns have been featured often in books and magazines.

She lives in Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, with her husband, Mark, and their two children, Samson and Robyn.