Here is the best available book on quilt making — a complete, easy-to-follow guide that shows you how to make beautiful, useful quilts that you will be proud to own and display. Even if you are a beginner, you will soon find yourself quilting like an expert by following these clearly drawn patterns, photographs, and step-by-step instructions.
All the information you need is here, lucidly and thoroughly explained. You'll learn how to plan the quilt, the number of blocks to fit a bed, how to select the pattern to harmonize with the design and color of the room, and how to choose materials. Clear directions explain how to cut, sew, and make applique patterns, patchwork, and strips. An entire chapter on design discusses basic elements, sources, making your own designs, avoiding sewing problems, how to use the rag bag, and much more. The section on patterns gives directions on tracing, seam allowance, and estimating quantity. There is full information on borders, quilting, and tufting, and just about every other aspect of quilt making.
Mrs. Ickis shows you over 100 traditional and unusual quilts, including Basket, Tree of Life, Flowers in a Pot, Traditional Geometric, Friendship, Square and Cross, Saw Tooth, Drunkard's Path, Flying Geese, Mexican Cross, Pennsylvania Dutch, Crazy Quilts, Yo-yo Quilts, Album Quilts, and dozens of others, including over 40 full-size patterns. You are given other uses for quilting, such as drapes, curtains, upholstery, lunch cloths, purses, cushions, and Italian quilting.
Completing the coverage are fascinating chapters on collecting quilts as a hobby; how to make full-size patterns of famous American quilts from pictures, small designs, and museum or collector's quilts; and a history of quilt making with personal memories.
This expertly written, hands-on guide demonstrates something that more and more watercolorists are discovering for themselves—that acrylics can do everything watercolor paints can do, and much more!
Beginning painters will find in this clearly written, profusely illustrated text expert advice on painting and equipment, along with step-by-step coverage of papers and other painting surfaces, colors and mediums; and descriptions of all the basic watercolor techniques: washes, wet-in-wet, drybrush, scumbling, opaque painting, and more. Professionals unfamiliar with this medium will discover that acrylic paints introduce a new level of excitement, flexibility, and color to their work.
To demonstrate the extraordinary variety of watercolor techniques possible with acrylic paints, this book includes 75 paintings by leading American watercolorists. In addition, five special, step-by-step demonstrations reveal the rich potential of acrylic colors and color combinations, and show how they behave with various mediums. Altogether,Acrylic Watercolor Painting presents a comprehensive picture of the creative potential of these versatile paints and reveals how they can open new worlds to the serious artist working in watercolors.
