JAPANESE
FOLDED PATCHWORK By Mary Claire Clark Search Press - May 2002 ISBN 1903975514
- PB Non Fiction / How To Book/Crafts/Patchwork
Reviewed by Rachel
A Hyde, MyShelf.com
Buy a US
|| UK
Copy
I thought patchwork was an exclusively American invention, but it
seems I was wrong. Here is a whole new way of doing patchwork that originated
in Japan, and Search Press has a coup indeed in publishing the only book on the
UK market on this subject. As you might expect, it has much in common with origami
and other paper crafts as the material is folded instead of just pieced together
and there are some delightfully different projects in this book. My favorite is
the western-style quilt with red and white bandannas and denim so if you are imagining
exclusively Japanese designs, then think again - there are English cottage garden
prints put-to-use handkerchiefs, American blocks adapted to show the versatility
of the method, Indian cottons and a fabric painted cot quilt for a baby with bright
circus designs on it. Not all the designs are for quilts, either; I for one fancy
making the bag and there is a beautiful Japanese hanging and cushion covers as
well as a throwover. At
the back of the book are lots of patterns that are 75% of their actual size and
the diagrams are attractive as well as clear, being a mixture of delicately-colored
drawings and photos. I felt that it might have been a good idea to include the
circus animals for the cot quilt, as finding circus motifs in a coloring book
isn't the easiest topic to research, but the numbers and letters for the other
child's project were included and so were most other pattern pieces. I was impressed
by the colored diagrams of the finished quilts and think, that this is one of
the best quilting books I have seen; it has the added advantage of being different! |