Allie Aller's Stained Glass Quilts Reimagined: Fresh Techniques & Design [Paperback]

A couple of months ago, I was on a visit to Chichester Cathedral and saw the stained glass window by Marc Chagall in all its glowing ruby-red splendour, backlit by the afternoon sun. I stood transfixed. Allie Aller draws inspiration for her stained glass quilts from many sources, but the landscape windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany are a particular favourite and inspired the Tiffany's Peacock quilt on the cover of her book. This is the most advanced project and comes with a full-sized pull out template to create a wall hanging. Whilst you could jump right in with this one, anyone new to stained glass quilting might want to work through the opening chapters, which outline the different leading techniques, fabric selection, and developing your own pattern. Allie describes in her introduction how she spent several years in the 1990s developing ideas for stained glass quilts and then moved into crazy quilting and hand stitching. Her recent return to the technique was inspired by the Modern Quilt movement and the graphic nature of stained glass quilting with its focus on composition, colour, line, shape, and fabric. This is evident in the Mondrian's Window couch quilt project using different thicknesses of leading to outline bold colour blocks. If I ever get around to making this, it'll go up on my wall!Stained glass quilts have been around for a long time, but here is a book that reimagines them by updating the whole idea and making it more versatile. Why only use traditional materials when there are so many other choices, and why only use traditional methods when there are all sorts of other options?One of the reasons why handcrafts are currently so popular is the way so many of them have been reinvented for modern peoples time, tools and tastes. While traditional quilts are lovely mixing it up a bit and coming up with something fresh and new is the best way of keeping things up to date and this book manages all that well. The book begins by looking at patterns alÓ.