Great entry-level book
Any book with two authors is likely to bring about an interesting amalgamation of styles. Sara favours scrap piecing while Marci is all about strip cutting so, between the two of them, there are some great combinations to find here in each of the 20 projects featured. A quick flick through the book’s images made me home-in immediately on the Sails quilt (pictured), which was made by Sara and quilted by Pam. It’s made up of a full assortment of solids ‘all combining to create sunshine, sky, red sails [and] the colour of mountains’. All sounded right up my street! It’s made up of triangle halves and gets its distinctive appeal from the ‘colour-value placement’, which is handily described in the section on Fabrics in one of the opening chapters. The instructions run to three pages and the paragraphs are economical rather than overly descriptive, but there is a bit of cross-referencing to chapters on technique if needed. The idea of this book was to take classic patterns such as Trip Around the World, Grandmother’s Flower Garden and Thousand Pyramids and build on the techniques using the tools, techniques and myriad of fabric choices that are now available. The authors hope that every reader’s choice of colour, texture and pattern will change a classically based pattern into a new design. Sara’s talents lie in establishing the ‘bones’ of the quilt (or the underlying structure of the pattern), whilst Marci likes to figure out the best way of crafting the designs – and not necessarily the quickest way, as is the case with charm quilts, which hinge on individual cutting techniques and the meditative qualities of the process. This is a great entry-level book for those who are keen to experiment with colour.
