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!

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