And speaking of books...

I just received this gorgeous book in the mail. It's The Painted Quilt, by Linda and Laura Kemshall.

Wow.

The timing is perfect for me, as I recently discovered how much I love painting on fabric. (Thank you, Gerry Chase.) But even if I hadn't had that revelation recently, this book would sure make me want to go play with paints.

But that makes this book sound limited, and it surely isn't. It covers dyeing fabric, painting, monoprinting, using stencils, discharge, and various other surface design methods. More importantly, though, the art in this book is flat out gorgeous and very inspirational. There isn't a simplistic project in the batch, and yet the methods shown are laid out to make them seem very do-able. And seeing how elegantly the techniques are used together to create such evocative and original work is really exciting.

I didn't realize it until it came up in a recent conversation that Linda and Laura Kemshall (mother and daughter) teach an online City and Guilds course. And they, with a few others, have just started up a new journal called "Thr3fold, The Journal of Creative Vision."

I'm a book junkie, as you may have noticed, and I have some really great books in my collection. But this is one I know I'll look at over and over and over.