crochet by faye: Book Review: The Uncommon Quilter

The Uncommon Quilter: Small Art Quilts Created with Paper, Plastic, Fiber, and Surface Design

published by Potter Craft

This book is very inspiring in so many ways. Let's start with the background. Jeanne challenged herself to make one quilt a week from 1999 to 2006. Ok, so that commitment in and of itself was awesome to me. Then in 2007 she challenges us to make one quilt a month, so that by December you can look back at your work and really see how you evolved during the year. You first need to go look at her gallery on her website of her quilts.

The book walks you through how you can go about completing this and along the way challenges you to think outside of the box when it comes to quilts. Again, awesome. The chapters are broken down into material. Each one I can attest, will make you think "man, what a cool idea". I especially liked her idea of using construction fencing in your quilt. I can just picture a piece of art with a doily as the background and a piece of painted fencing on top framing it. Its a 60s mod meets 40s pretty. And that's just one idea, the book is filled with ways to use paper from maps, or the backing from seals, or the plastic netting from fruit, or embroidery with fiber, or painting with crayons. And if that is not enough, she has a blog were she shares even more great inspiration.

This book would definitely make a great gift for anyone who is in a creative slump and needs a bit of a pick me up. Its certainly inspiring to me.