Huge number of quilting design patterns
This book features a huge number of quilting design patterns. Many free-machining design books focus on the patterns as a way of building up your skills and repertoire but this one approaches it in a slightly different way, looking instead at planning and designing a pattern to cover a whole quilt. Planning the whole quilting area can be quite intimidating but Jessica breaks it down simply, into triangles. By thinking of a pattern to fill a triangle and then building the triangles together, you can build up an area easily. She considers the type of patterns that are good for stitching around quilt corners and for creating circular patterns. An element of computer design comes into the book and all designs are included on a CD for using in this way. The software suggested and used to illustrate the book is Inkscape, which is free to download (although, if you have your own graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator, you will easily be able to adapt the instructions for use here). Photoshop and other photo editing software are not so useful as they use Raster graphics (pixels) which don’t respond so well to manipulation. The computer tutorials make it easier to create your own designs and resize but if you are technophobic, you can use the CD to print the designs and plan by hand. The patterns are divided into 10 suites including Baroque, Florals and Angels, Olive Leaves, Shaggy Leaves and others. All the designs are printed out and there are also additional layout design suggestions. These are particularly good for the reader to be able to visualise how a combination would work and in what direction to stitch. The designs are all very ornate and produce some very impressive motifs to follow. A helpful appendix includes the steps Jessica works along to create a design from scratch.
