The Uncommon Quilter: Small Art Quilts Created with Paper, Plastic, Fiber, and Surface Design

by Jeanne Williamson

Book Overview

Offers quilters, sewers, paper crafters, and mixed-media mavens with 52 projects for creating unique small quilts. This guide helps to create unique small quilts for self-expression, creativity and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307381226
• ISBN13: 9780307381224
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Potter Craft
• Length: 159 Pages
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.6" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

Inspriation for any creative

If you want to be truly inspired to play with texture, color, personal journaling and simply making art, get a copy of THE UNCOMMON QUILTER by Jeanne Williamson (Potter Craft, Random House). Jeanne has been creating small quilts every day for years, each one a page in her life. I do not make quilts. I am a beader, but let me tell you, THE UNCOMMON QUILTER still gets my fires burning! Jeanne's explorations make me want to MAKE stuff. The book itself is superbly designed; modern and bright, it seduces you with lush full page, full color images and easy to follow projects. Yes, this is a HOW TO book! What it really teaches amidst the step by step projects is how to make your own creative discoveries, walking by Jeanne's side as she has made hers. Share a remarkable journey with a highly creative artist, and become one yourself, with THE UNCOMMON QUILTER. [...]

How to be inspired

This beautiful book is a source of inspiration on many levels. First, it centers on the theme of art "journaling." Perhaps this is not an original idea in itself. However, Jeanne Williamson's projects open our minds to find inspiration in both the profound (her son's graduation from high school) and mundane (a shredded morning newspaper). Next, this book inspires us to expand our palette of materials for quilting projects: paper, paint, plastic, found objects, and even dryer lint. Finally, the book is an inspiration for the sheer beauty of Jeanne Williamson's art. While perhaps not everyone will find her style to their liking, everytime I look at the examples in this book, I see new and interesting layering of patterns and textures, and a sheer genius for layout and design.

The Art of the Ordinary

The pleasures of this more-than-a-how-to book run deep. Each small quilt (paired with clear directions) is one of dozens of weekly 'entries' in Jeanne Williamson's fabric-art journal. The works are interesting, often beautiful, in their own right - but even more so when taken together as byproducts of Williamson's year of noticing. She chronicles events, small finds, shapes, colors; and invites the reader to do the same. In a wonderfully unassuming way, Williamson takes the significance of the ephemeral and discarded - well-charted territory in the art world - and entrusts it to the reader. The Uncommon Quilter is a practical, unsentimental testament (and guide) to connecting with the ordinary, and to making of that connection art that is indeed anything but common.

Great resource for ideas

This book is a product of a great experiment: how to use quilting and fiber craft to create a multimedia journal of your everyday life. The author created a small quilt a week for seven years, and the book contains many beautiful examples. Rather than just being an artist's retrospective, however, the book shows you how to work in a similar fashion. I doubt that many people will actually follow the step-by-step instructions to recreate the specific quilts shown here, but the book is a gold mine of ideas about how to use fun, "found" objects (e.g., dryer lint, onion bags, plastic sushi grass, shredded paper) in creating quilts and small works of art. My one quibble with the book is that it would have been better with a spiral binding (so it would lie flat and make it easier to consult while you are working). But all in all, it's a brilliant and very user friendly guide showing you how to incorporate elements of your everyday life in your art.

A creative license for quilt makers

Very inspiring. The book details the thinking behind and instructions for each of the 52 small quilts in the book. I found a line in the book that sums it up best: "whether certain quilts were good or bad is not the point; the point is that I made the time to try new things, that I took risks, and that I learned a lot. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself, both artistically and personally." The book is a creative license of sorts to think small, experiment, and not worry if a piece is a success or not.