April 30, 2009

Book: A Guide to Quilling Flowers

A Guide to Quilling Flowers by Helen Walter is quite popular, but I have mixed feelings about it. I like the designs in this book, but the book itself isn't that good, in my opinion. It contains wonderful quilling flowers, including detailed explanation of making them: what color and length of strips to use, which quilling shapes to use, and how to arrange them. You can find a lot of interesting ideas there. For example, I used a cactus from this book for my dad's birthday card. The designs depict plants in a very accurate way and succeed to grasp their distinctive features very well.

On the other hand, there are some things about this book I didn't like. First, the pictures showing basics of the technique are so small, that it makes impossible to understand anything, which renders almost useless the whole section (although short, but important). Then, all the designs in the book are photographed "flat", so that you just can't see the details well. I think that with quilling, it's important to view it at an angle. Finally, the implementation is far from being neat: some pieces fall off or are missing at all :( Yellow glue stains on some of the compositions don't look beautiful, either.

All in all, if I'd had an opportunity to check it in a store, I wouldn't have bought this book.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree with you, Inna. While there were some interesting flowers shown,I was disappointed with the quality of the actual quilling.
Pat Caputo

Jeanne said...

Thank you very much for your honest critique of this book!

Lori said...

Thank you...I loved your very detailed and thoughtful review. Your work is beautiful and I enjoy reading your blog.

Inna D. said...

Thank you all for your feedback!

Pepper said...

Hello, I am wanting to know if you could give me the pattern for the beautiful bumblebee you made. I have been asked by my mom who is 91 to make a bee birthday card for her friend who is 90 and I don't want anyone's but yours. A video was mentioned, is that where I can go? Thank you so much for your help.