New Cuts for New Quilts: More Ways to Stack the Deck

Issue 5, 2007

The book starts with the basics for quiltmaking and is recommended for both beginners and intermediate students. The recommendation is that you read the whole of the introduction section. I'm too impatient to do this, tending to skim over this part, leaping straight into the projects. However, I came unstuck this time and had to go back to read carefully the section on Making the Blocks - it all made much more sense then! The next section covers how to choose your fabric and there is a good tip on how to choose fabrics that are going to blend well together. You then move on to choosing whether you want to do a freehand or template cut for your blocks, and there are very clear instructions for using both methods. You do have to remember that the more cuts you make in the block will reduce your finished size, so start off with big enough pieces. The next thing to decide is whether you want traditional or controlled shuffling of your pieces - again this is very well set out and the diagrams make it clear exactly what you have to do. Karla recommends chain piecing the corresponding section of each square, so that you build them all up at the same time.

There are seventeen projects for you to do. A good way to use up those slightly larger scraps, as yu can match colour tones rather than need large quantities of one single fabric. This book is the third in Karla's series of 'stacking the deck'. I have not used either of her previous books but have found this book to stand on its own as a one-off set of projects to work through.

Pauline Lindsey