Customer Reviews

Creative Quilts: Inspiration, Texture & Stitch

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Knowing where you want to go but not having a map to get there is a frustrating predicament. Fortunately, Sandra Meech has provided a detailed map for the new quilt artist striving to begin the creative journey. Her book Creative Quilts: Inspiration, Texture, & Stitch, is a thorough guide, lavishly enhanced with photos and drawings.
This second book of Meech's (the first being Contemporary Quilts: Design, Surface, and Stitch, Batsford, 2003), seems to be more focused on the serious artist vs. quilt art in general. Although some of the same topics are discussed, she illustrates with new examples. The two books complement one another rather than repeat the content.
Ms. Meech serves as an experienced guide through the myriad paths of creativity, providing tools (mind mapping, creating a sketchbook); principles (design, composition, color theory); techniques (stitching, collage, photography) and plenty of ideas. She explores texture, including the technique called wireform, a method of stitching and manipulating fabric to render it in three dimensions.
The book is best digested in small bites because of the richness of its content. It would be difficult to absorb all the chapters at once, as the burst of creativity each topic evokes is enough to keep an artist busy for weeks.
This book should be in the library of anyone who is serious about working with cloth as art, if for no other reason than as a visual treat. Any artist struggling to get started or looking for a breakthrough would find ample stimulation here.

Sandra Meech's new book is will take your quilting/textile art to a new level. Lots of design exercises, a comprehensive section on sketchbooks and inspiration, and gorgeous quilts from Meech and others. I didn't think her 2004 book "Contemporary Quilts: Design, Surface and Stitch" could be bettered, but if you loved that book - you NEED this one. All new info, so it's good value, too.
The best new quilting book of 2006, hands down.

I thought Sandra's first book was the best textile book in my library until I received Creative Quilts. This book is wonderful. It is full of gorgeous photos that illustrate the ideas so well. If you want to move forward in your creativity purchase this books. I am sold on this author and look forward to more publications from her.

I love this book. I do quite a lot of textile art and this book has lots of inspiration and different techniques. The use of a sketch book mimics the use of a notebook for my writing. I often take photos of skylines and other scenery, then use them in my quilting.
I thoroughly recommend this book for those quilters who need a bit of help to break out of the square.
Cathryn Hart

I really enjoyed this book as the subject matter and making it into art was something I had always wanted to do but didn't know how. I was able to visuallize my own ideas and plan a future project with her techniques. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to develop their own quilted ideas and memories.

If you want to make quilts that are reminiscent of pages from an altered book then this is the book for you. Unfortunately for me, this style is not one I enjoy. I thought, from the cover and title, that there would be lots of information on free machine embroidery, but there are only 4 half pages of very general text on this topic. A large portion of the book is about choosing and creating a sketchbook for recording your ideas and observations, something, I felt, could have been covered in a page or two. The design section is quite good; it is aimed at designing quilts that are abstract and/or like pages from an altered book. I was hoping to learn techniques from this book that I could apply to my quilts, but I found it too general. Oh well, my loss will be the local libraries gain, and people whose tastes match those of the other reviewers of this book will be very happy.

This book along with Sandra's contemporary quits has been inspirational to me. These two books have almost become my bible. I can look through them time and again for ideas and they help to spark my creativity. There are a variety of techniques to make your quilts more interesting and diamentional. This book was well worth the money and would make a great contributional to anyone who is interested in art quilts to their own personal library.

This book is exactly what I hoped to find. It is filled with beautifully illustrated quilts & embroidery with step by step details on design, construction and how it was embroidered. Sandra has detailed her quilt design process giving the reader a clearly demonstrated understanding visually & textually of what inspires her quilts and then firstly how she gets them out of her head and onto paper & then translated into a quilt. Sandras use of sumptuous fabrics showing us how fabrics are combined, moved around and translated into images is wonderful. The embroidery is textual & three dimensional and the magic is nothing you see seems unachievable. Highly recommended for teachers, students and anyone wanting to take their quilt making to a new level.

If I could only have one book on this topic, this would be it. This book is invaluable and the information it contains far surpasses any other books on this type of art. There is enough information in here to fill up the space of several workshops. I can't recommend it highly enough. The same goes for this author's other book, "Contemporary Quilts". It's the same way - packed full of useful information that is FAR more in depth than other books on the subject.

This is a wonderful book to spark your creativity. It was reccommended by Amazon when I bought another quilt book and I'm glad I bought it.