String Fling: Scrappy, Happy and Loving It!by Bonnie K. Hunter
Blurb:
Bonnie is back! And this time she's introducing us to a world of string piecing. Strings are strips and scraps usually too small to be useful for other projects, but they are just right for these 13 new quilts. Within these pages you will find a twist on traditional, time-honored designs along with some new ideas straight from Bonnie's scrappy imagination.
My Reaction:
If you love a scrappy style of quilting, you'll want to look at some of Bonnie K. Hunter's patterns. She has that "everything including the kitchen sink" style that (in my ever-so-humble opinion) feels truer to the classic "mend and make do" quilt aesthetic than the matchy-matchy, perfectly coordinated style, where every piece of fabric comes from one collection of prints. That's not to say that a matchy-matchy quilt is inferior or wrong in some way. It's just a different style. Personally, I find a busy mix (and sometimes even intentional clash) of prints and colors charming. If you do, too, give this a look!
The patterns in this particular book (as you might have gathered from the title) all include string piecing. I won't bore you with definitions and descriptions you could easily look up on your own; suffice it to say that string piecing is easy, fun, and addictive. I'd say string piecing is an ideal introduction to quilting, since there are so few rules to follow. If you can sew a (reasonably) straight line, you can string piece.
These patterns take the idea of string quilting and run with it in different directions-- and in varying degrees of difficulty. There's room to grow new skills in these pages. Recommended for fans of the scrappy style!
(This book also describes Bonnie K. Hunter's system for cutting and storing scraps so that they're at their optimal usefulness. I haven't implemented her system in my own relatively young stash, yet, but it's interesting, and I'm keeping it in mind for the future. If you're drowning in scraps, it does seem like a great way to create useful cuts of fabric that are easier to transform into quilts.)
