cover image Brave New Quilts: 12 Projects Inspired by 20th-Century Art from Art Nouveau to Punk & Pop

Brave New Quilts: 12 Projects Inspired by 20th-Century Art from Art Nouveau to Punk & Pop

Kathreen Ricketson. C&T/Stash, $25.95 paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-60705-719-2

Ricketson (Little Bits Quilting Bee), an Australian blogger (whipup.net) and quilt columnist, marries her interest in art to her creativity as a quilter. The result is colorful quilts of varying degrees of difficulty and derivative design. She admits an attraction to opposites in designs that reveal her “little spark of quirkiness.” In particular, she is drawn to 20th-century art and social movements, from art deco and Bauhaus to punk; she extracts the essence of each via color, text, line, and motif. Ricketson teaches design principles, such as space, color, and mood, before laying out 12 designs, each augmented with suggestions for the reader/quilter (her commonest verb is “try”). To teach use of line, she offers the quilt “Intersections.” “Weave,” its horizontal lines jabbed by a wedge of complementary lines, manifests Bauhaus ideals. Cubist concepts play in “Rhythm.” Each quilt design includes a chart detailing size of blocks and finished quilt, degree of difficulty, and techniques. Throughout, Ricketson offers tips, such as tracing fonts right off the computer screen for “Frothy Nothing,” a fabric tribute to dada. (Aug.)