Book review: I Heart Intentional Piecing
I'm sure I don't need to proclaim my love for paper-piecing yet again, because you guys totally already know that about me. (But if you need a refresher, you can click here. Or here. Or here!) So it probably also goes without saying that when I saw Amy Friend's book, "Intentional Piecing: From Fussy Cutting to Foundation Piecing," I knew I had to have it!
Amy, who blogs at During Quiet Time, is one of my very favorite quilters out there, and paper-piecing is one of her specialties. Intentional Piecing is full of adorable projects that take advantage of my favorite technique! (Visit Amy's website to see more of her book projects.) To start with, I decided to give her "Tell Me a Story" block a go.
The Tell Me a Story quilt from Intentional Piecing actually uses both fussy-cutting and paper-piecing—but in spite of that, this is a super easy, quick little block to make! Seriously. Mine took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish.
My favorite thing about the Tell Me a Story block is that Amy encourages quilters to use fabric selections to do just that: Tell a story within each individual block. There's an interesting sidebar in the book in which Amy talks about how she makes connections between the prints used in each block—sometimes those connections are obvious, other times, less so.
I decided to fussy-cut from this adorable print by Heather Ross of underwear and clothing hanging on a line. To me, long underwear on a clothes line brings to mind images of an old-time farm and a harried farm wife trying to get all her chores done.
So a gingham print and a chicken wire print? What could be more perfect than that? Suddenly I had a detailed picture of the farm, the clothes line, and even the wife in my head. This is a whole new dimension of fabric selection that I'd never really considered before. Pretty fun!
Whether you're a hard-core paper-piecer like me or a relative beginner, I think Intentional Piecing will make you look at piecing—and the prints in your stash—in a whole new light! A great one to have in any sewing library.