Marilyn I. Walker

Given the title, I expected a treatise on historical quilts (which the book in part is), but was surprised to find many contemporary quilts from within 5 years of the book's 1990s publication, some of which are particularly unfortunate.

Beautiful photography, but their artistic staging involves a lot of draping quilts in places that one should never put a quilt. I winced to see quilts draped over the branch of a tree, or a rusty fence, or a not-especially pristine woodpile, or a car's fender; and trailing on dirty snow, grass, brick pavement. It's every bit as beautiful as Country Living magazine's quilt spreads of the 1990s, but not as respectful of the quilts.

The text is adequate to excellent in describing the quilts, often with interesting detail. However, it is difficult at times to determine which quilt she is talking about. On page 75, she begins a paragraph "This quilt" and one naturally assumes it refers to the quilt in the previous paragraph. It doesn't. Four or five re-readings of the page is sufficient to disentangle the confusion. At other times she veers suddenly into fulsome praise of the contemporary quilters whose work she illustrates: two paragraphs of laudatory flattery culminate in "Canada is fortunate to have in (this person) both a teacher and a quilt artist!" (Author's exclamation point. And in fairness, this is not one of the really awful quilts. But she's enthusiastic about them too.)

So what is the verdict? Eye candy. Wonderful eye candy. And you can learn something about Ontario's heritage quilts as well.… (más)