Anna Maria's blueprint quilting Explore color, pattern, and technique with 16 joyful projects from 4 simple design structures

This dazzling guide from Parry (Anna Maria's Needleworks Notebook), the design director for fabric wholesaler Anna Maria Textiles, explains how to make colorful quilts. While such common block patterns as the half-square triangle and snowball appear throughout, Parry throws in some of her own designs, including the "whippersnapper," which features thin fabric strips over half the block with additional strips intersecting perpendicularly on the other half. She shows how to create variations on four "blueprints" that offer general guidelines for arranging blocks. Among the four versions of the "triptych" blueprint, which divides the quilt's composition into three columns, the "Roman numerals quilt" juxtaposes two columns of blue log cabin blocks against a central strip of tans and oranges, while the "fence line quilt" builds on that baseline by adding appliqué Dresden fans. The progressive difficulty of the projects will help sewists build their skills, and the final two designs, though challenging, are absolute showstoppers. One offers an angular reimagining of Georgia O'Keefe's Flower Abstraction, abandoning the traditional block format for irregular shards of riotous color. The other comprises a stunningly detailed portrait of Parry's youngest daughter, painstakingly recreated with scraps of paisley and floral print. Parry's sophisticated artistic sensibilities set this apart from standard quilting manuals. (Nov.)