Creative Tucks and Textures for Quilts and Embroidery by Jennie Rayment. 2004 Quilters’ Resource. Soft cover, 128 pages, ISBN 1889682403. Full color photographic illustrations throughout the book.
The first time I picked up this book and looked through it, my jaw dropped and I wondered how anyone could do what I was seeing. Not only was the author using quilting designs, she was using decorative machine stitching, AND using tucks and folds and wiggles in the fabric to create 3-dimensional quilt designs. Many of the designs are shown in plain ecru muslin to show the design details and how light reflects on the design because of the way the fabric is manipulated. Further in the book are quilts designed in color that truly highlight this amazing technique. One of the most amazing things for me was how she became inspired by looking at a mushroom upside down and the tucked circles that were developed because of this sudden spurt of insight.
I love the authors “So what” attitude to sewing "oops". Her belief seems to be, so called mistakes are really just a chance to discover a new way of doing things. I have not yet had a chance to practice any of the techniques of the book, due to my work on sewing quilts for Hurricane Katrina victims, but hope to in the near future try some of this detail work.
Anyone who loves manipulating fabric, would be inspired by this book and would gain some good insight by the directions she gives. Those who are bored with ‘flat’ quilting will find some good challenges in this book. And anyone who is serious about art quilts, would find this a great reference book for their shelves.
No comments:
Post a Comment