Hawaiian Quilting: Instructions and Full-Size Patterns for 20 Blocks

By Elizabeth Root

Book Overview

Detailed instructions, 20 full-size quilting blocks (each 18" square) for creating exotic floral motifs: orchid, waterlily, hibiscus, 17 others.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 048625948X
• ISBN13: 9780486259482
• Release Date: March 1989
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 48 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.2" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

An idea book for those with quilting and/or sewing experience

The subtitle pretty much tells you everything that is in the book: 'Instructions and full-sized patterns for 20 blocks'. If you are already a quilter, this is probably worth the $4 cover price for the patterns (full-sized quarters or eighths, to be cut out 'snowflake-making style' from folded fabric.) If you are not a quilter or seamstress, you will probably want to take a class, or at least get a book geared toward teaching beginners, before considering this book. Sewing knowledge is assumed, as when whipstitch and blindstitch are both referenced without tutorial images or descriptions. The term 'echo quilting' is used repeatedly, but not defined. The Hawaiian applique technique is explained in a few words and even fewer black and white diagrams that will just about get the idea across if you sew at a trained beginner or intermediate level. There also isn't a lot here to enlighten anyone who would like to know the answer to the obvious question: 'Why a quilt on a tropical archipelago?' There is a 2-page summary of how quilting came to the islands--but nothing really about why it caught on. It includes better than half a page that could be easily summarized by saying "The names of Hawaiian quilt patterns may not tell you anything about what the pattern actually is or the quilter's intent; sometimes it is an inside reference you may get if you are Hawaiian, other times it is personal to the individual quilter." It would have been nice to have even two or three specific examples of names that aren't to be taken at face value, with an approximation of their actual meanings, to justify the extra verbiage. The only color is on the outside covers. The book even lacks color photos inside the covers, a useful feature of other Dover craft books. I understand that Hawaiian quilting is traditionally a 2-color-per-quilt process and the patterns come across well enough in black and white. It would be nice, however, to have step-by-step color photos of the basic applique technique. That might make the book more useful to those of a wider range of skill levels.