Traditions from Elm Creek Quilts

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 3 OCT 2011

Chiaverini (The Wedding Quilt) writes novels plotted around the Elm Creek Quilters. She describes well the work produced by the women, but all the fine adjectives in the fiction do not do justice to the quilts she produces. Perhaps that's why, in addition to 18 novels, Chiaverini has also authored four collections of quilt projects, based on the novels' quilts. Her newest contains quilts described in Chiaverini's last half-dozen novels, along with sidebar quotes from the novels, but discusses little of the quilts themselves. For The Last Quilter, set in the Civil War, Chiaverini designed Mr. Lincoln's Spy. Pineapple Patch, the quilt developed from The Aloha Quilt, is worked in an emerald green material set in ivory from Chiaverini's fabric line. She designed the 13 projects, including two holiday quilts, and pieced them, sometimes aided by her mother, Geraldine Neidenbach, and her sister, Heather Neidenbach; a friend, Sue Vollbrecht, machine-quilted them. Templates are sized to work with. The directions, from cutting to constructing, instruct the intermediate quilter; for example, terms like "cornerstones" are not defined and the quilter is occasionally referred to a general quiltmaking book for technique advice.