Magical Four-Patch and Nine-Patch Quilts

Rating:
Summary: Give a girl a break
Review: Great creativity is sometimes born of impatience, and this seems to be the case with Yvonne Porcella, who says she never has made a large quilt using a repeated block because "I do not like the precision required to measure and calculate fabrics to make a large quilt." Instead, she thinks up magical numbering schemes, fiddles with brightly colored strips of fabric, and makes eye-popping quilts out of simple elements. In this book she shares her clever techniques in great detail and with lots of examples. Some reviewers have carped that Porcella departs from her usual bright primary palette in this volume, but it is nowhere written that an artist can't experiment with other styles and appeal from time to time to other color sensibilities. The primary purpose of the book is to teach a highly formalized technique, and the variety of color choices shows that it works as well for country plaids as for high contrast.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I love Yvonne Porcella's work. It has a distinctive look, filled with simple shapes and bright primary colors. Sadly, most of that is missing in this book. I can just hear the publisher telling her to use varied palettes to appeal to more people. Who knows? Maybe she will. But somehow I can't see the repro and plaid crowd wanting to make her freeform quilts. If they want to, there are instructions for how to assemble a conglomeration of 4-patch and 9-patch units with spacer strips. In trying to please everyone, the book ended up being neither traditional nor contemporary and all the magic is missing.

Rating:
Summary: Still inspiring for beginners
Review: I was sorry to see this book had such a low review and wanted to add a stronger plus. It was one of the first quilt books I bought and it got me thinking out of the box. I enjoy it and still go back and look through it for ideas. Now that I know Yvonne Porcella's work better, this book does demonstrate a generally more pallid palette of color but it is a good book for a beginner that would like to explore making irregularly patterned quilts.

Rating:
Summary: Still inspiring for beginners
Review: I was sorry to see this book had such a low review and wanted to add a stronger plus. It was one of the first quilt books I bought and it got me thinking out of the box. I enjoy it and still go back and look through it for ideas. Now that I know Yvonne Porcella's work better, this book does demonstrate a generally more pallid palette of color but it is a good book for a beginner that would like to explore making irregularly patterned quilts.

Rating:
Summary: uninspirational
Review: Sadly,this book lacks variety in the patterns. It is basicly a one technique book showing several layout and color variations. The biggest dissappointment is the uninspiring color combinations in the pictures. I expected a lot more exciting color play from a fiber artist that has several other books dedicated to the use of color in quilts.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing--and not well edited
Review: Though I love her work, I am disappointed in Porcella's new book. Not only do the projects lack her work's usual vibrancy, but the diagrams and directions contain inaccuracies--for example, a drawing shows a strip of seven 2-inch squares as being the same length as a 20-inch strip.
It's too bad--I really looked forward to receiving the book. Oh well, maybe taht will teach me not to buy pre-pub.