Sunday, July 1, 2012

Sunday Morning Quilts


I know, I couldn't resist, I had to post this review on Sunday morning!  I've been sitting on this book, Sunday Morning Quilts, by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison (C&T Publishing, 2012), for a couple of months now, because I couldn't think of the right thing to say about it.

One of the subheadings on the cover is "16 Modern Scrap Projects," and I've been really hung up on the word "modern."  Or is that "Modern," with a capital "M"?  But you know, a) that stuff doesn't really matter, and b) that's not really what this book is about.  Well, ok, there are 10 pages about what defines a modern quilt, but let's just ignore those for now and go straight to the quilts themselves.

There are a lot of fun, bright quilts in this book, but the word I like best to describe many of them is innovative.


There isn't a half square triangle anywhere in the book.  There IS a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, like the Gumdrops quilt above with it's simple raw-edged applique and strip assembly.  Or the Ticker Tape quilt below, where the applique and quilting are done in the same step.


For me, that is the paradox with this whole "modern quilt" issue.  On the one hand, there are a lot of interesting quilts with new ideas - out of the box - and on the other hand there's 10 pages of definitions, which are just creating a new box.  Personally, I hate boxes, and I certainly don't see any reason for them in quiltmaking.

To duplicate the look of these quilts you do need to have a fairly large stash of modern (there's that word again) fabrics, by which I mean solids or simple, graphic prints in clear colours.  But there is no reason that you couldn't use the techniques with any fabrics you have at hand.  I think the results could be quite interesting!

There's a good section about storing fabrics, especially scraps, with ideas about how to categorize and organize them.  And the machine quilting ideas are very accessible.

These are not heirloom quilts, they are quilts that are meant to be used.  I think that is the idea behind the title, although they never specifically say.  If you leave aside the angst about what's modern and what's not, and skip straight to the quilts, there's lots to see and lots to try in this book.

3 comments:

  1. I have always said that there is no point making a quilt if you are never going to use it lol. I have seen a few quilts made from this book in blogland. There are some lovely ones in the book too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Saw your gumdrops quilt photo in the post and made one...have blogged about it. Do have a look if time permits.
    http://creativeinstincts.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/gumdrops-quilt/

    Thanks a lot
    Leena(Sonalee)

    ReplyDelete

I'm told Blogger has been bouncing some comments, so if it happens to you I'm sorry! But the settings look right so I can't explain it. In any case, thanks for reading!

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