Weekend Review: One Patch Quilts

 

One Patch / edited by Karen Costello Soltys
Emmaus, PA: Rodale 1995
122 p.

A bit of an outlier for today's review! I have had this book for many years, even though I am not a quilter. But I alwayus found it a lovely & approachable book for that distant day when I would surely make a quilt 😄

I like the frugal aesthetic of one patch designs; it's another way to use up a lot of random scraps. And while my other reviews this month have been focused on mending & maintaining your wardrobe this book gives you an idea of another way to use pieces of clothing or off cuts from your sewing in a different way.

The book has a handful of different traditional one patch templates, ranging from 'easy' to 'advanced'. The instructions for each give you the yardage requirements for different finished sizes, a traceable template, and assembly steps.

This makes it useful to all levels of quilters, but as someone who has only made a handful of baby quilts in the past, I was attracted to the stark simplicity of the Thousand Pyramids design, made of a triangle patch.

The colours in this example are a little dated since the book was put out in 1995 but another feature of this book is that they provide a line drawing of each pattern at the end of the instructions for it so that you can play with colour layout for yourself. This can allow for secondary patterns formed by colour layout, always fun to experiment with. 

But I didn't bother with this because I am planning on making a Charm quilt -- that's one in which each piece is a different fabric.  I started cutting a triangle from all of my cotton leftovers a couple of years ago now, and keep them all in a small bin that I add to as I have fabric bits to cut. However I have fallen behind so have to catch up to my scraps!  Since I am going to be making this for myself I am not fussed about perfection. 

I am thinking about using some of my dress weight scraps as well and just interfacing them to give them more of a cotton hand. That way my potential quilt will be full of memories & I might reach enough triangles sooner!

But aside from all this personal information, I do recommend this book if this might be something you would also like to try. It's clearly laid out, gives lots of basic info on the patchwork & the quilting elements & is beginner friendly. It also has bright clear photos, and some of the advanced patterns are quite striking. Just another idea for small scraps, even if you aren't usually a quilter!