Art and Inspirations: Ruth B. McDowell

The originality of the quilts in this book are awe inspiring, but don't expect to get any instructional how-to's. The author uses some verbage to describe what motivated her designs (many flowers and plants transformed into fiber art), but leaves the actual making of such to the imagination of the reader. This is a digest of the author's evolution as a quilter.

Ruth McDowell's well-documented journey to develop an extremely personal and artistic quilting 'statement' almost leaves you breathless. She has been able to adapt complex photos and themes into vibrant fabric art, using mostly traditional quilting techniques. However, her innovative use of fabrics (plaids never had it so good), shapes, and design concepts truly rate the title of "Art & Inspirations". A good friend with whom I shared the book got halfway through and said "I'm afraid to turn the pages - they're all so wonderful I can hardly stand it." My sentiments exactly.

What a joyous collection of inspiring images! This amazing teacher creates paintings with fabric. Her wording is clear and uncomplicated for the novice and, I am sure, challenging enough for the seasoned quilter. Buy this book to look at as well as to learn from! I purchased it to use as inspiration for my paintings but Ms. McDowell makes the whole process sound exciting enough to get me peicing too!

What is surprising about this book is that it is not just a text-book showing simple patterns that you can copy, nor is it a picture book of dozens of incredible quilts that you will probably never equal. Instead this is a clear-eyed tour of the history of a wonderful Quilt Artist. Ruth shows some of her first simple, but well chosen and unique quilt patterns. These simple patterns from nature, lead directly to her more complex quilts, where she shows her increased talents in dazzling quilts of landscapes and semi-abstract trees and plants. But if nothing else, this book is well worth the cost for the single quilt using her daughter's outline in translucent black cloth in an amazing picture quilt. This is a book of inspirations for quilters at all levels.