The Miniature Quilt Book
   Dinah Travis
  1998 Krause Publications Iola WI USA
   ISBN: 0873415957


Stunning little quilts ranging from log cabin, hexagon, Somerset star to crazy patchwork. Each quilt has step-by-step instructions, alternative design suggestions & clear, exquisite photos in locations. For quilters & miniature enthusiasts.

My mother was a quilter, of the hexagon style & I'd help her by tacking the backs of the scraps of dresses, sheets & shirts around stiff paper templates. I remember many winter evenings, our family around our coal fire, curtains drawn, listening to BBC Radio, as my mother sewed the pieces into rosettes & I dreamily folding & tacking bright pieces of memories.

Decades later I joined the Wild Olympic Women Quilters, designing & sewing king size bed quilts for auction to raise funds to help the Wild Olympic Salmon organization. These women met once a week, year 'round in a tiny abandoned rural post office. We served a variety of teas & bakery goodies, I once brought a platter of cucumber sandwiches which blew my friends' minds & taste buds & we sewed & talked & created the most lovely quilts & friendships.

So, coming across Dinah Travis' colorful, sensible & easy-to-follow Miniature Quilt Book was a great pleasure. I'd not looked at a kale patch quite that way before. My father had made me a doll house & seeing the little rooms with the little quilts, gave me lots of new ideas.

Dinah Travis clearly describes Materials & Basic Quiltmaking Techniques. She explains Hawaiian, Knotted, Frayed, Paper, Cathedral, Tucked, Stencilled & Sashiko Quilts that take my breath away. There are many more explained in the same understandable way.

There are quilts here, both easy & complex, for anybody to make, those who like a traditional British style will find the well-known hexagon technique or the wholecloth for a Welsh plain-quilt. The Mola & Kantha quilts are both magical & the formal Japanese Sashiko quilt adds astonishing beauty.

There is even a section on how to make a plain pine bed, mattress & pillows for it as too, a section devoted to Storing & naming your quilts & for Further Reading.

A lovely, fascinating book - a good gift for the quilters you know.

More by Dinah Travis: The Applique Quilt & The Sampler Quilt Workbook
(06/06/99)

Rebecca