Book Review Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern by Jera Brandvig

Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern: Fresh Techniques for Busy Quilters by Jera Brandvig

I make quilts, although my quilts aren’t sewn like anyone else’s. Technically, they are not even quilts although the finished product looks like a crazy quilt. I’m working out my procedures and eventually will write it up as a book and, before you ask, it’s not foundation piecing. In the meantime, I read quilting books to see how other authors approach their subject.

That’s how I discovered Jera Brandvig’s first quilting book, Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern. Ms. Brandvig is a quilter, blogger, mom, and fabric designer based in Seattle. I’d never heard of her — no surprise as I don’t follow quilt blogs — but she’s worked out an easy way of making quilts faster than the usual cut out a thousand teensy diamonds and piece them back together.

Her book gives complete instructions on her piecing method and it looks fast. Her piecing style is improvisational, which I happen to like very much. I love the serendipity of piecing a quilt without knowing exactly what the finished product will look like. A quilt kit or explicit directions and fabric choices guarantee a fixed result but that’s boring for me. I like that high-wire act, without a net. I’m willing to risk time, effort, and material to see what I end up with.

You may not.

Being the cheapskate that I am, even if I don’t like my results, I still use the quilt. If it keeps the sleeper warm and it can be successfully washed, any quilt is a success, no matter how jarring the color choices turn out. You’ll never catch me ripping and resewing. If it’s really bad, layer the ugly quilt underneath another, more styling one.

Ms. Brandvig provides techniques to design your quilts as-you-go from start to finish. Each piecing variation results in a different-looking quilt, even without taking fabric choices into account. No one else’s quilt will look exactly like yours.

If you don’t feel as brave, you can use one of 13 projects to test the waters. You really can stop and start these quilts as they’re sewn and quilted a block at a time. Her blocks are manageable in size and can be easily finished in stolen moments and set aside when life interrupts. It’s only at the end, when you’ve pieced and quilted all the sections that you sew them together into the final, finished, bound quilt.

Ms. Brandvig’s method also lets you use up plenty of scrap from the stash, always an important consideration when your long-suffering spouse gives you the fish-eye when you come home from the fabric store with more gorgeous, must-be-bought cloth because you’ll just regret it forever if you don’t.

Why don’t I award Quilt As-You-Go five sparklers?

Remember that I said I like designing on the fly. I like working without a net. I like interesting pattern and color juxtapositions. I take design risks because I am going to use up that scrap from the stash and I am not going to buy more fabric for any reason. But even so, I try hard to make my quilts look good.

I did not like Ms. Brandvig’s finished quilts. At all.

Her book provides plenty of color photographs of each of her 13 projects, along with pages of lavishly illustrated techniques to design your own. She has zero color sense nor does she have a designer’s eye based on the copious evidence provided.

Her finished quilts are so random, even when she’s using a limited fabric palette. I look at the photographs of Chief Sealth or The Emerald City and I cringe. They should have been better.

I want my asymmetry to be symmetrical and balanced. I want my colors to be evenly dispersed across the quilt surface and not bunched up in one corner as if I threw them there in the dark. If I have a piece of blue hippos wearing spacesuits in the upper-left corner, then by God, I’ll have a corresponding piece of blue hippos wearing spacesuits in the lower-right corner and probably the other two corners as well. I want the observer’s eye to flow across my quilt, spiraling across the surface instead of getting trapped in muddy, unrelated dead ends.

I don’t think that she spends enough time considering what the finished quilt will look like. Even with the limited fabric palette, she sews each block as a one-off. But they are not one-offs. They have to work with each other as a unified whole. Ms. Brandvig would be better served if she sewed up her blocks and then laid them out on the carpet to work out the best arrangement. Then, she could see if she needed to make a few more to square up her design. As it stands now, the individual parts do not add up to a greater whole.

When I make my quilts, I’m always spreading them out on the carpet to see if my design idea is working. I don’t believe Ms. Brandvig ever gave a second look at her quilt designs. She sewed them up, photographed them, and that was that. One and done. First draft material, for you writers out there, without bothering to run spellcheck.

Obviously, you do not have to do this. I wouldn’t. Her method is fast enough that some time could be spent on studying the finished blocks, laying them this way and that, and choosing the most pleasing array. It would not be wasted time.

I like this book. I like her methods. I can easily adapt them to my own color and design sense. I don’t like her finished designs. But you might! This is a good book to add to your quilting library, especially if you want to try something different, fast, unique, and that has a good chance of success if you’re paying attention to your fabric choices and layout.

Here’s Ms. Brandvig’s website if you want to follow her adventures.

She’s also got a Facebook page.

Ms. Brandvig wrote a follow-up book called Quilt As-You-Go Made Vintage: 51 Blocks, 9 Projects, 3 Joining Methods if you want to explore her methods further.