Creating Art Quilts with Panels: Easy Thread Painting and Embellishing Techniques to Create Your Own Colorful Piece of Art from Panels

In this richly illustrated guidebook, Hughes, a self-taught fabric artist, shows how to decorate ready-printed swaths of fabric with custom-made embellishment. As she points out, by adding quilting to fabric panels with printed designs on them, crafters can jump right into what she calls the “fun part” of creating art quilts, bypassing the design stage to concentrate creative energy on the quilting itself. Despite the word “easy” in the subtitle, this is not for the beginning sewist, nor the unadventurous crafter. After listing supplies and demonstrating how to prepare a panel, Hughes presents machine-sewing techniques, including creating an overlay and sewing with bobbin thread. Throughout her lessons, Hughes adds cautions, such as when not to use “trapunto,” a way of creating a “raised and puffy surface” on a piece of fabric, which for some projects can add extra visual impact, and for others can be “overkill.” Bolstered by six projects, including an ornamented Christmas tree and a serene heron, Hughes’s appealing resource will persuade traditional and modern quilters alike to try quilting with panels.[em] (Nov.) [/em]