Thursday, September 29, 2011

Book Review: A Child's Comfort

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: A Child's Comfort


Author: Bruce Johnson

Date: 1977

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

ISBN: 0-15-117184-X

Length: 116 pages

Illustrations: many full-page photos, some pattern graphics

Quote: "The colors you've selected may be the child's first visual experience."

This posthumous book seems to have been the last project Bruce Johnson, then employed by the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, worked on before he died. He was not yet thirty years old. In this short hardcover book, he set out to accomplish three things:

(1) To catalogue the quilts in a display the museum officially opened three months after Johnson died.

(2) To discuss the history of children's quilts.

(3) To help readers design and make classic child-sized quilts.

He didn't have time to do any of these things at great length, but he did them competently. This book contains lots of inspiration and an adequate amount of instruction for quilters.

Most of the pages are devoted to full-page pictures of the museum's quilts. Needless to say, they're all beautifully worked. Some have faded; a quilt catalogued as "pink and white" was probably red and white when new, and appears to be pink and tan in the book. Some are still colorful, and some reflect a period when brown tones were considered interesting in their own right. Some have large, simple motifs; some are made of dozens of tiny pieces; some have pictorial appliques, and some are "whitework," elaborately quilted pieces of plain white fabric.

Experienced quilters may not need an instruction section to tell them how to use these inspirations, but, for those who need to be walked through a project, the book contains detailed instructions for Log Cabin and other classic patchwork quilt patterns.
 
Although the author is no longer living, A Child's Comfort is available only at collectors' prices.
 

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