Wearable Art for Real People

I love the idea of "wearable art" and one-of-a-kind fashion, and Mary Mashuta's book really fits into that niche.Mashuta's book is a compendium of instructions and design ideas for creating clothing using the patchwork and piecing techniques normally associated with quilting. Her designs and methods (as photographed in the book) produce clothing a little funkier and "ethnic" than much of what I've seen; usually when quilting techniques are adapted to clothing, the results have a kind of "Little House on the Prairie" look to them, in my opinion.Mashuta generally relies on simple geometric shapes and works her art in the folding, piecing and decorative stitching. Many of the clothing designs she has worked up for this book seem to be borrowed from classic Asian styles.Although I like a lot of what's offered in this book, much of it is fairly complex; there are not a lot of smaller projects featured here. Theoretically, a crafter could adapt the techniques to smaller projects, but the novice might have trouble envisioning how to do this.I do like the clothing pictured in the book, but many of the colors have gray or brown undertones and don't really excite the reader like some other more vividly photographed needlework books. While I find myself coming back to this book time and again for ideas (and I will continue to), it's not one of my favorites. I'd definitely recommend this for the serious crafter or creative sewer; I would not recomment this book for someone with little needlework experience.