Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color by Laura Wasilowski

Playful Free-Form Embroidery will inspire fiber artists to create their own pictorial stories. Laura Wasilowski's quilts are joyful, fun, and colorful. You can learn her techniques with the six patterns she includes in her book--and then get playing and make your own Stitched Story!

Paint the world with color! Wasilowski uses wool and wool felt for her applique and perle cotton for the embroidery embellishments. She has a gift for combining stitches and colors to create detailed, visually interesting quilts with lots of texture.

Below, ladybugs have a stairway to their nut house. 

This cheery bird on a pin cushion is adorable.

A black background always makes colors pop. It also shows up the details in the foliage. 

This sweet lamb greeting a bird would be lovely in a nursery!

What story do you want to tell? 

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color
Laura Wasilowski
ISBN: 9781617459931
UPC: 734817-114086
eISBN: 9781617459948 Book ( $19.95 )
 eBook ( $15.99 

from the publisher

From the best-selling author of Joyful Stitching, Laura Wasilowski brings 6 new hand-embroidery projects with full-sized patterns and step-by-step pictorial directions. Bright and lively project designs include a whirling paint brush, a dancing bird, tea cups tipping, flowers blooming, a fuzzy sheep, and a happy acorn nut house. With the free-form embroidery approach, you can either follow the given directions, or allow your imagination to run wild and improv your own additions—there is no right or wrong! Plus, no special tools are needed—just felt or felted wool, perle cotton #12 and #8 threads, embroidery needles, and sewing equipment. Start your stitch story!

• Stitch 6 textured projects with easy-to-follow free-form embroidery instructions
• Each project features a unique stitch combination, including some wool applique
• Finished creations are visually stunning art work that can be treasured for a lifetime

about the author

Laura Wasilowski loves fabric. Her first love was a sweet pink gingham fabric selected for a 4-H sewing project. As a college student, she discovered more exotic fabrics. And while she earned a degree in costume design, she found a new thrill - dyeing.

For many years Laura created hand-dyed fabrics for garments that she sold in boutiques across the country. It was a friendly neighbor who introduced Laura to her current flame, the art quilt. This latest love is a marriage of fabric, color, and whimsy that she truly enjoys.

Laura is married to her colorful husband, Steve. They are the proud parents of Gus and Louise. Laura lives in Elgin, IL, where she hand dyes fabric and thread for her business, Artfabrik.

Visit Artfabrik online: artfabrik.com

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto combines stunning art quilts with educational essays on animals and plants in peril of extinction.

This big, oversized art book offers hours of interesting reading on the importance of preserving wildlife and wilderness.

Getting to know the vanishing species will spur interest in the work of the organizations working to preserve them, including the Sea Turtle Conservancy and to the WILD Foundation which are funded by a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book.

As a quilter and fabric lover, I enjoy looking at the details of the quilts. The artists show great skill and discretion in the use of preprinted fabrics.

Each species is given a large photograph presenting its representational art and its binomial nomenclature, description, habitat, and threat level.

I love the use of three-dimensional elements in some of the quilts. For fiber artists, there is a wealth of inspiration to be found in these quilts.

The contents include

• Forwards by biologist Kim O'Keefe Beck, member of Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife, and professor and author J. Drew Lanham, also a Board of Director member of the Audubon Society  
• Conservation and the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) by Wendy Strahm
• Introduction by the author explaining the origin of the book and how species become identified as endangered
• 182 quilts of endangered animals and plants
• Biodiversity and the Firecrown by Peter Hodum
• What About the Wetlands? by John Overland
• On Mammals and Reviving Species by Janet Rachlow and Jim Witham
• Art and Heart: Our Place in the Story

Fiber artists and quilters will love this book. I also envision it as a gift (especially from a quilter) to younger readers with an interest in nature and wildlife.

With its broad scope of interest, I plan on donating my copy to my local library to sit alongside DeSoto's previous book Inspired by the National Parks, which I reviewed here and donated to our library. Some books are meant to be shared.

I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives
by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto
Schiffer Publishing
Size: 8 1/2″ x 11″ | 182 color images | 280 pp
ISBN 13: 9780764357893
hard cover $34.99

from the publisher

Lively, colorful, and skillfully made fabric “portraits” of 182 endangered species bring them to real, vibrant life. Each portrait features fascinating animal and plant facts from rescuers, scientists, conservationists, and more: where they live, what their superpowers are, why they are at risk, and how we can help. Dedicated and passionate people who work to protect endangered species share details of their roles and specialties, the planning behind conservation measures, threats to healthy habitats, and inspiring success stories. This book fosters eco-awareness and responsibility with a hopeful and positive tone, not only educating but inspiring action. 

Learn How To Make Landscape Art Quilts, Step-by-step, with Anne Loveless

Michigan quilters are proud of our own Ann Loveless who won the 2013 Grand Rapids ArtPrize for her Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore landscape quilt (seen on the book cover) as well as a viewer's choice award. The dunes quilt is constructed in 5 'x 5' panels. But Ann's techniques also create smaller quilts, and in this book she shares her methods.

Ann Loveless with her prize-winning quilt

Most of Ann's quilts are inspired by Michigan scenes, places, forests and flora: Trillium, sand dunes, Pictured Rocks along Lake Superior, lighthouses, the Mackinac Bridge, birch forests, quiet ponds.

The book is in three parts:

• Planning, designing, and preparing to make your art quilt
• A Photo Gallery of Collage Quilts
• Constructing and finishing your art quilt

Ann also shares her quilt story and resources.

Ann's own quilts help to illustrate basic concepts of color theory and color value, and she covers composition, selection of inspiration photo, and photo transfer methods. She covers fabric choices and threads, supplies, and quilting options.

Ann's approach is improvisational. She does not create patterns, but freeform cuts fabric and places her pieces. The raw edge applique is machine quilted. The result is an "impressionistic" look. She also creates "confetti" quilts with pre-fused fabrics on a fused mosaic background.

Now, for many quilters that sounds impossible. But it is how I created my Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe portrait quilts. I hand drew the face, cut out the background face fabric, and free hand cut and placed pre-fused pieces. You have to trust your instinct.

Detail of William Shakespeare by Nancy A. Bekofske

from Landscape Art Quilts by Ann Loveless

Many of the Gallery quilts include her inspiration photographs and details of the quilt. At her website you can see her small mosaic, collage, impressionistic, and large fabric mosaic quilts currently for sale at her shop State of the Art Framing and Gallery in Beulah.

In Part Three, Ann walks you through duplicating one of her art quilts. Lake Collage, 14" x 18", is a typical Michigan view of the lake seen from a sandy lakeshore framed by trees. Photographs and text explain every step in great detail, right through making the binding and rod pocket. It is the best step-by-step guide I have seen.

I highly recommend this book for quilters who want to learn how to make landscape quilts.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Landscape Art Quilts, Step-by-Step
Learn Fast, Fusible Fabric Collage with Ann Loveless
Ann Loveless
Kansas City Star Quilts
ISBN: 978-1-61169-145-0
 Book ($27.95)
 eBook ($19.99