Customer Reviews

Design Essentials: The Quilters Guide

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This book is gratifyingly rich with ideas about techniques and ideas about designing, with lots of gorgeous pictures. Torrence offers inspiring guidance for the creative process of designing quilts and wearable art (or, indeed, any visual art).

The book explains several interesting techniques such as "collage curves," working with a design wall, designing with a single shape, and "improving the checkerboard," with "how-to's" on both design and execution. It is full of beautiful and colorful examples.

One chapter that I found especially thought-provoking is called "Help for Problem Quilts." It shows "before" photos of some less-than-overwhelming quilts and asks "what's wrong?" Each is accompanied by an "after" photo showing how its beauty, interest, and impact were improved, along with an explanation of the design principles that suggested the improvements, and the specific techniques used to execute them. This book is worth paging through over and over; it gives me new ideas every time.

This book has got me going in a whole new direction in quilting. I love the collage curves and the simple step-by-step guide that Lorraine uses to help us get started. Its like taking a class in the privacy of your own home. Thanks Lorraine, for sharing your wonderful techniques with us. I look forward to more of your wonderful ideas. A great book with lots of inspiration and hands-on, detailed projects. Love it.

This book has a wealth of examples of excellent design elements. I can't wait to try out some of them. I particularly like the illustrations and descriptions of designs that needed a little more work to reach their full potential.

I hope we will see more works from this well-respected author.