Customer Reviews

Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter: Easy-to-Follow Lessons for Dynamic Art Quilts

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I take classes from Katie, buy all her books and her dvd, love her work and can tell you this book is the best yet. Chock full of detailed information on how she creates not one, but all methods of her art quilts. Katie takes you from the first step, how to find an idea, to the finished product in detailed explanations and pictures. She explains how to create different type of art quilts from your own photos, paintings, or sketches. From start to finish she shows, in easy to follow photos, how to design and actually construct the quilt in several methods. A must have primer for the beginning quilter who is ready to branch out, as well as the experienced art quilter who wants to try different techniques. I highly recommend this book as a reference tool that will have you re-reading it over and over for techniques as well as inspiration.

The text Katie writes is focused on her own thinking processes of analysis and alternatives as she plans a quilt from finding the initial concept to the various ways you can turn your idea or photo into a one-dimensional design. She includes her methods known as ghost layers, fractured landscape and the painterly painterly approach. Katie presents a great deal of information in such a way that anyone could follow her method or use it as a reference for idea generation and color and design compositions.

When I tell my husband that "I'll be in my cave with Katie", he knows exactly what I'm up to. My cave is my quilting studio and the Katie I refer to is Katie Pasquini Masopust, one of the worlds most dynamic and vibrant quilters.

I've got to know Katie through her previous publication Color and Composition for the Creative Quilter which she wrote together with Brett Barker. So when her latest publication titled Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter came under my radar, I had to have a look and see whether she has been able to bring to the viewer the same freshness and easy to understand concepts of designing within quiltmaking, in this new publication. Well, I must tell you that not only has Katie achieved to continue her patient explanation of her ideas, but the illustrations and photographs speak clearly for themselves.

This book is like a very good bottle of red wine. It needs to be opened, sampled, then left stand for a while, whilst the reader absorbs each delicious page of concept, theory and details.

The first few chapters of this incredible publication gives a review of the principles and elements of design and then in the further thirty odd pages, Katie explores shapes, lines, details, repetition, Blind painting and watercolour painting. Is your mouth watering yet?

And as if that's not enough, Katie then takes the reader through the process of Design through to Pattern. As with other Pasquini Mosopust publications, a number of vignettes are included, to explain elements that are mentioned in the text. For instance, Enlarging your Design is explained extremely well, including a very clear explanation of the use of the Proportional Scale Wheel that many quilters have purchased, and may be (like me), not completely understood how to use.

C&T Publishing, Inc is continuing to bring to quilters all over the world the most comprehensive range of expert craftspeople who are able to communicate extremely effectively their passion for quilting and pass on to readers their approach, style and method that enables them to achieve the creation of phenomenal quilts. I happily recommend this publication Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter to quilters, where ever they might be traveling in their journey of quilting.

Dynamic art quilters receive a set of easily-followed instructions for integrating quilting designs with artistic painting efforts in Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter. It's packed with techniques that work for all levels of quilters, from beginners to advanced, and it is packed with gorgeous quilting examples from lines and squares to still art and landscapes. Quilting collections will find it a winner.

This book was recommended to me by a friend and I have not been disappointed. Katie P. Masopust has created a wonderful text outlining her process of designing and creating an art quilt. Pictures and text are laid out in a way that makes Ms Masopust's methodology is easy to understood and easy to follow. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in designing your own art quilts.

I have long held an interest in quilting after having started my first quilt around 40 years ago. But at this point all the beds have quilts and so do most family members. Time to do some more creative quilting. As I have studied Art Quilts over the last few years, at times I have found myself not understanding at all what the quilter was intending and even why anyone thought that ugly piece was worth a prize. I still find some art pieces to be truly ugly but with the help of instructional books I am beginning to understand more about what the quilter was trying to accomplish and I have decided that I too would like to make an art quilt. So this book along with others got put on my Wish List and this one became a Mother's Day gift to me from my son. Realizing he only got it because of its location on the list and the price, all I can say is he did a great job picking out a book!

This book talks about art quilts in ways that are understandable and then has activities to do to break those binding fears of "I'm not an artist" and "I'm not creative". Reading through the different projects, I realized that yes I could do these things and maybe I too could be successful at making an art quilt. Consider that one of the projects in the book is to paint blindfolded with an assistant playing different types of music and helping you to move and have the color of paint you want for the tune. I'm sure they are also there to keep you from accidentally painting the walls and wayward children and pets but that isn't the point - you will be painting with a blindfold on! Then you take off the blindfold, observe what you have done, find spots on the paper that you especially like and make it into a quilt. I told my husband about this and he got enthusiastic and volunteered to help paint with me and I already have bought my paints. That is just one of ten exploration exercises the author has in the book. The book is filled with many color photo illustrations of the author's exercises and the finished quilts made from them and also her students work.

The only real weakness I found in the book was the actual making of the quilts themselves. I would have like to see more detail in making them as these aren't your typical patchwork quilts, they are basically machine pieced or appliquéd and she only spent 4 pages on that part. However, I have plenty of books on making quilts in my reference library, it is the creativity lessons that I need and appreciated as they give you a jumping off spot to venture out into the great unknown or art quilting.

Besides the wonderful quilt samples by both the author and other artists, the book gives great information on basic art concepts. Katie shares some fun techniques for creating abstract paintings. She then shares how she crops and creates fabulous, colorful quilts from these paintings. Creating quilts from photos is also covered. Katie shows how you can crop your photos, create a quilt pattern, add new design lines, and how to choose fabric colors for your quilt. I think the information in this book is well written and presented, and beginning artists as well as those more experienced will find it a good choice for their art quilt/design library.

This is a wonder full book on Design Explorations that you will not find in any other book. The author is a superb quilter and can give you a look at new techniqes. You won't be able to put it down.

I must have missed the part where it states this book is in black&white.
Very difficult to read about color theory and no enjoyment as when looking at other quilting books.
Want my money back.

This book is a wonderful addition to any quilter's or artist's library. However, the kindle version of this book is in black and white! Hard to read about colour theory in black & white or enjoy the beautiful photos available in the text version. It is very disappointing.