Free-Style Quilts: A "No Rules" Approach

Cut fabric shapes freehand or use a pattern, building layers as you go. Complete the design, and you're ready to machine quilt. 3 patterns for fish designs, plus how-to's for flowers and butterflies.

Inspired by her love of fabric, Susan Carlson developed an approach to fabric collage that ultimately resulted in astonishing pictorial fabric art of richly layered textures and patterns. Her superb draftsmanship and masterful sense of color yields quilts more akin to painting than piecework. Luckily, she is just as expert at explaining her methods to others as she is at using them herself; the result is a book filled with crisp color images of her own work as well as some by her students, along with well-written text that details everything quilters need to know to start using her techniques. Rather than present specific how-tos to duplicate her designs, she teaches readers all her secrets so they can create their own designs, using her amazing works as inspiration. --Amy Handy