Mother Earth's Quilt Sampler: Appliqué Patterns Inspired by Mother Earth and Her Children

by Sieglinde Schoen Smith

Four delightful quilts—one each for spring, summer, fall, and winter—celebrate the changing of the seasons. With each quilt featuring little children enjoying the pleasures of the season, this unique combination of appliqué and embroidery is showcased in each pattern with colorful, close-up photography, so that they can be seen in amazing detail. Step-by-step instructions accompany each quilt, and extensive introductory chapters examine the artist’s thoughts on technique. A template pack, shrink-wrapped with the book, is included as are full-size patterns for each quilt, which can be directly transferred to fabric.

Genres: Childrens, Quilting

64 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here is a book whose title caught me and intrigued me while the fact that it is also directed to quilters further intrigued me. Unfortunately the book just missed its mark for me.

I have no idea who Sieglinde Smith is nor her work so the name is definitely not a seller of the book for me. The capital and lowercase letters that were used with their little creature as well as plant decor were cute but not complete sellers, especially as some of the animals seemed just a bit too cartoonish for my taste.

The ABC portion of the book was a bit disappointing. Instead of going with their usual theme of showing something related to the letter subject such as in this case something for Mother Earth or even quilting, the letters were just used to ensure that the poem's sentence on the page started with that particular letter.

Meanwhile the poem itself is nothing to write home about. After a while it becomes a story about a flower fairy and her slow change from growth to dreams of next year's harvest. Although slightly creative it isn't award-winning.

For quilters there is actually a very small bit more information about Sieglinde Smith in the back, some information about the appliqués taken from the pages and how to do layered embroidery. There is also a further grid for the appliqué sequence for the one who is interested.

All in all it was decent but I was most definitely not the right audience for this book.

[Janyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are beautiful quilts with fantastic embroidery which I doubt I will ever try. The most enjoyable part though was reading about her childhood in Germany during and after the war where her love affair with nature and embroidery began. These little figures came from her love of nature and handwork.

[Danielle T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alas, the copy we picked up at the friends of the library sale is missing C/D. H can recognize letters even though these ones are very stylized. Some instructions in the back about how to quilt those letters, but I am not a fiber artist.

[Miranda Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

One quilt for each season, one for spring, summer, fall, and winter —to celebrate the changing of the seasons. With each quilt featuring little children enjoying the pleasures of the season, each pattern was very colorful and could be taught to children learning colors. This is also an alphabet story book that can be used to explore the alphabet.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be attempting one of these in the future.

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cute little fairy story; not exactly suitable as an ABC, but maybe for quilters?

I kept it for a while thinking it could be cute for some sort of pagan thing, but it's really just a fairy story.