A Book Worth Blogging About

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a series of blogs about art quilting. I have never lost my desire to create one, but it seems I always have orders to attend to and they took up most of the remaining 10 months from August to June of this year. I had about 3 weeks of a break, then right back into fulfilling orders. Not that I'm complaining, but sometimes it would be nice to have time to create something new. An art quilt, for instance.

So I keep fueling my desire with images, information, and yes, books. I recently stumbled on a book I thought would be interesting through Interweave Press' Hurt Book Sale. (It ends July 25, 2013 so get there while you can!) I looked through the books being sold at a fraction of their original cost and found The Quilting Arts Book. I only paid about $5 plus shipping for it, but it is also available on Amazon. 

 This book not only inspired my imagination and fueled my desire to create, but it is packed with tips on creating collage, painting, thread painting, making fabric from paper, applique, and reverse applique. I probably missed a few, but it is literally everything you ever wanted to know about art quilting in ONE book. It has projects to work through, beautiful quilts to admire and draw from, and step-by-step how-to on nearly every technique. The only area they lacked in was whole quilt creation, but I think that is really out of place in this book anyway. Whole quilts are more of an artistic area all their own.

So I'm hoping with this new nudge I'll soon be taking you on a journey with me through creating my first art quilt. Step 1 is complete, and that was to buy a sketchbook with paper heavy enough for acrylic, watercolor, charcoal, pencil and collage. I found one fairly inexpensively at my local Hobby Lobby. With the coupon I paid a total of $4. It has 140lb paper safe for all media. You can also get it at Amazon for a little more, but if you're a Prime Member or don't have a Hobby Lobby nearby you save on shipping!

I hope you'll join me and maybe give me some thoughts and pointers of your own on creating art quilts. You can find all relative posts on my new page Art Quilts.