Review: Modern Patchwork, Elizabeth Hartman

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book review, modern patchwork, quilts

I’ve been enjoying my prize, signed-by-the-author copy of Modern Patchwork for a week now. It lives on my pile of quilt inspiration books on the table in my bedroom, and it’s actually displaced Denyse Schmidt’s Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration in the top stack spot. That, my friends, is the highest kind of praise.

Hartman’s blog, Oh, Fransson! is one of my favorite quilt blogs. Hartman’s style is so different from my own. She’s a strict quilting modernist, with an occasionally whimsical representational side. (Her newest pattern, Refrigerator Magnets, is exactly what I mean.) I enjoy her style because it’s so refreshing to look at different things. I’d never dream of the quilt designs she comes up with, and her approach is very unique. Lots of quilters say they’re modern quilters, but rely on classic blocks made in modern fabrics to get where they’re going. Not Elizabeth Hartman. She’s absolutely unafraid to come up with new blocks, new designs, new ways to think about the quilt.

This book, her second, is full of new quilts. My husband enjoyed paging through and picking out quilts he liked. He says they remind him of IQ tests, where you have to figure out the emerging pattern and guess which block comes next. He chose the most challenging quilt in the book–Escape Artist–as the one he’d like most to have. I promised I’d at least consider making a queen-sized version for our putative new bed in our putative new home this winter fingerscrossed. Even though this quilt looks terribly challenging, Hartman’s written some beautifully detailed instructions and diagrams, and I feel like I can just about get my mind around the project with her help.

I also think Hartman is great at helping quilters with the basics without seeming condescending. This book is meant as a next step for intermediate quilters, quilters who feel they’ve conquered the basics of patchwork and are ready for some challenge quilts. And then there’s me: I live for a quilt challenge, but don’t really have all my basics down, because I am so self-taught. Hartman’s helpfully included sections on basic techniques (pinning! I’ve already changed the way I pin my blocks at her suggestion, and oh my gosh what a difference) and fabric choices, illuminating some of the aspects of quilting I find most difficult.

In short I’d recommend this book, even to a beginning quilter, because it’s a fresh, new look at quilting. Hartman’s pushed the boundaries of modern quilting past their simple beginnings (please, please, no more wonky log cabins), and I feel much more ready to take on my first real “modern” quilting project with her guidance.

without question

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bink and gollie, book review, books

Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo (yes, of Despereaux fame), Alison McGhee, and Tony Fucile was our FAVORITE picture book of 2010. Nathan loves the comic-like structure of the books, and the way that the pictures are often allowed to narrate the action. I love that Bink and Gollie are ordinary girls. They aren’t princesses. Or superheroes. Or even pigs with long ears, big mouths, and impressive wardrobes. They’re just girls, and they’re just best friends.

So when a friend who works at Candlewick Press scammed Lucy an ARC of the sequel, Bink and Gollie: Two for One, I squealed a little, fawned a lot, and thanked profusely. (And then, like a nut, I pre-ordered the hardback because, seriously, the ARC is not going to stand up to the kind of wear it’ll get around here.) Two for One pubbed yesterday, and it’s well worth $15.99 of your children’s-book budget. Bink, a short, round, blonde ball of energy, and her best friend, brunette, well-spoken, slim Gollie, go to the state fair. There, they lose at Whack-a-Duck (though, boy, that carny running the game gets the worst of it), work through a mild case of stage fright, and have their fortunes told.

As in the first book, it’s not the situations themselves that make this book charming, though there’s plenty of cheap physical humor for easy laughs. Not only are Bink and Gollie ordinary girl characters, but they have an ordinary little-girl best-friendship. Their friendship isn’t without its hiccups (“It’s a compromise bonanza!” Bink declares in the first book), but it’s a stronger friendship for those hiccups. When Bink beans the carny, Gollie’s there to support her. When Gollie opens and closes her mouth like a fish instead of bursting forth with talent at the amateur talent show, Bink drags her out of there to an impromptu, audience-of-one talent show in a neighboring barn. Naturally, when the girls have their fortunes told, their futures are, “without question,” intertwined.

It’s hard work to raise a little girl. It’s even harder work to raise one who’s not some kind of princess-pink-vomiting Gossip Girl-Mean Girl drone. Lucy’s a little young yet for Bink and Gollie, but it’s the kind of book I’ll keep reading to her and putting in her hands as she grows. Ordinary girls deserve good friendships, good role models, and good books. Bink and Gollie: Two for One is one of the good ones.