The Perfect Patchwork Primer

by Beth Gutcheon

This is the most complete book of patchwork instruction ever published. The Perfect Patchwork Primer differs from other quilting manuals by teaching you not only how to reproduce old quilts but also how to create and execute your own quilt designs. (It also outlines more than seventy other patchwork projects -- from coasters and mats to tote bags and wall hangings.)

Here you will find everything you need to know about choosing and handing materials, making attractive patterns, and using modern technology without loss of quality. Once you learn the techniques, Ms. Gutcheon shows you how to earn money by quilting, how to organize quilting parties, where to send for supplies, and much, much more.

Among the topics covered in this book...

*Quilting as a communal activity -- for parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and lovers
*Quilting by hand with a frame -- or without one
*Adapting any traditional pattern for 'machine-sewing
*Quilt names, stories, history, and superstition
*Album quilts, memory quilts, freedom quilts, and bride quilts -- and the parties at which they were made
*Why men make quilts

Genres: Quilting

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 1974

About the author

Beth Gutcheon grew up in western Pennsylvania. She was educated at Harvard where she took an honors BA in English literature. She has spent most of her adult life in New York City, except for sojourns in San Francisco and on the coast of Maine. In 1978, she wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary on the Kirov ballet school, The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and she has made her living fulltime as a storyteller (novelist and sometime screenwriter) since then. Her novels have been translated into fourteen languages, if you count the pirate Chinese edition of Still Missing, plus large print and audio format. Still Missing was made into a feature film called Without a Trace, and also published in a Reader’s Digest Condensed version which particularly pleased her mother. Several of her novels have been national bestsellers, including the most recent, Leeway Cottage. All of the novels are available in new uniform paperback editions from HarperPerennial.

Reviews

[Kathy England · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really sure how to rate this book. I bought it 35+ years ago when I was first learning to quilt in the early 1980's. I never read it through but used it as a reference book here and there. Reading it now, after 38 years of quilting and all the changes in quilting is like reading history. Beth Gutcheon wrote this book pre-rotary cutter, pre-cutting mats, pre-Olfa (and other) quilting rulers, etc. We have much faster and easier way to make quilts, but this book was written at the very beginning of the rebirth of quilting. I'm proud to say that I can make a quilt using templates that I've made myself, that I can graph out my own patterns, and that I know how to machine and hand piece quilts. But I usually use faster, more modern methods when I quilt.

[Erika Mulvenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically, this book published in 1973 was one of the first "new" books on the subject written that included new techniques of the day. The author describes how outdated the "old" methods of quilting were, instructing in the chapters that follow ways of designing, cutting and sewing blocks using the "new" ways. Compared to today's methods of cutting, sewing and quilting, this book definitely reads as vintage!

It does have an interesting chapter on the history of American quilting, and includes diagrams of some early and often used quilt blocks. A decent book for anyone who is newly interested in the roots of quilting in America.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned to quilt from this book. Some of the techniques are probably old-fashioned now. It's a very chatty, friendly how-to book.