Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Carole Samples - Crazy Quilt Stitches



................... .....................Sistah quilter Carole Samples is an expert on crazy quilt stitching! Back in 1999 the American Quilter's Society published her book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches: A Comprehensive Guide to Traditional Hand Embroidery Inspired by Antique Crazyquilts, which has now sold almost 24,000 copies in four printings!

Mrs. Samples fell in love with Crazy Quilts and their fascinating stitches in 1988. In an email interview, Mrs. Samples said she "came to understand The Really Important Thing: that no one who embroiders her quilts can have enough designs for her seams!" In researching and writing her book, Mrs. Samples said "My hope had been to provide the background information that would let everyone in on the basic, most obvious methods behind the building of complex stitchery structures.... I believe that my book has, more than anything else, given courage to a lot of women who did not know they could create even one block of pretty crazywork."

Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches "contains mostly "gently-challenging" to very challenging designs among its 3,030 hand-drawn illustrations," Mrs. Samples related. "The book almost demands that the reader practice in order to excel."

Well, there are others in the blogsphere who admire and practice with Mrs. Samples' book:
* Big Horn Mountain Creations - See Gail's sampler in progress!
* Thelma's Sew n Things - She's just starting out with the book
* When This You See, Remember Me
* Allie's in Stitches
And, even HGTV Simply Quilts Carole Samples interview

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

24,000 copies of her book on quilting. THAT is a tribute to her talent and imagination. You go, Ms. Carole!!!