Quilting From Every Angle

February 15, 2016

In her first book, self-taught quilter Purvis presents 16 patterns for modern quilts highlighting angled shapes--primarily triangles, with the occasional polygon. Purvis's inspiration comes from a variety of sources, including architectural details, natural textures, traditional quilt blocks, and Southwestern design. There's a greater diversity of styles than in the typical modern quilting collection--Purvis's projects delve into improvisational techniques, several mini quilts, a medallion quilt, and the usual bold, geometric shapes with plenty of negative space. Most experienced quilters are familiar with techniques for accurately piecing half-square triangle and flying geese units, so it's the tips for sewing more unusual angles and forms that will be most useful. Purvis supplies tutorials for sewing Y-seams, making half-rectangle triangles, and foundation paper piecing. Standouts include Citrus, with its colorful paper-pieced pie chart-esque units machine appliqued to black-and-grey fabrics, the Kaleidoscope mini quilt, which takes the ever-popular hexagon and breaks it into arrow and diamond shapes in a rainbow color palette, and the Split Decision mini quilt, which features lines of flying geese units radiating out from a center square. VERDICT There's an abundance of substance in this debut, and modern quilters will relish the mix of styles and projects.

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