That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons from a Parallel Universe

By Lisa Boyer

Fed up with feeling like you can't meet the standards of the Quilt Police? Do you want to quilt for comfort and pleasure -- and not to win some high-falutin' quilting contest? Weary of worrying about what others will think of your color choices -- or your pieced points? Or your applique stitches? That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons from a Parallel Universe is the quilting companion you've been wishing for. Lisa Boyer, a popular columnist for Quilting Today magazine, gives you permission to quilt because you love it. She clears your path of all those merciless judgments pronounced by the Quilting Queens. She invites you to make quilts that are full of life. This funny book offers these nine principles for the 20 million quilters in America: 1. Pretty fabric is not acceptable. Go right back to the quilt shop and exchange it for something you feel sorry for. 2. Realize that patterns and templates are only someone's opinion and should be loosely translated. Personally, I've never thought much of a person who could only make a triangle with three sides. 3. When choosing a color plan for your quilt, keep in mind that the colors will fade after a hundred years or so. This being the case, you will need to start with really bright colors. 4. You should plan on cutting off about half your triangle or star points. Any more than that is showing off. 5. If you are doing applique, remember that bigger is dorkier. Flowers should be huge. Animals should possess really big eyes. 6. Throw away your seam ripper and repeat after me: Oops. Oh, no one will notice. 7. Plan on running out of border fabric when you are three-quarters of the way finished. Complete the remaining border with something else you have a lot of, preferably in an unrelated color family. 8. You should be able to quilt equally well in all directions. I had to really work on this one. It was difficult to make my forward stitching look as bad as my backward stitching, but closing my eyes helped. 9. When you have put your last stitch in the binding, you are still only half finished. Your quilt must now undergo a thorough conditioning. Give it to someone you love dearly--to drag around the house, wrap up in, spill something on, and wash and dry until it is properly lumpy. No reason not to have quiltmaking be a pleasure, says Lisa Boyer, who has as firm a grip on her sense of humor as she does on her quilting needles. If we didn't make Dorky Homemade quilts, all the quilts in the world would end up in the Beautiful Quilt Museum, untouched and intact. Quilts would just be something to look at. We would forget that quilts are lovable, touchable, shreddable, squeezable, chewable, and huggable -- made to wrap up in when the world seems to be falling down around us.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561483516
• ISBN13: 9781561483518
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Good Books
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Lisa Boyer has a wonderfully fresh way of looking at the quilting world!

This is a breath of fresh air about quilt making. Lisa is a tremendously talented quilter but you would never guess it by the way she writes. It is such a funny book that my teenage children begged me to read it to them... Any quilting books that teenagers want read to them must be good! No, there are no patterns or directions to improve your skills, but this is a very funny book. I highly recommend it!!!!!

--Amusing look at the world of quilting--

Through her experiences as a long time quilter and staff writer for Quilting Today Magazine, Lisa Boyer gives us her unique and interesting insight to that sometimes-fussy world of quilters. A world where all of the points meet exactly at the right places, where stitches are perfect and the quilt could end up showcased in a museum. Anyone who has really tried to make a quilt will understand the fun that she pokes at that elusive world of perfection. After all, we see quilting shows on television, view quilts at craft shows and bazaar's and never see any quilt that looks like our homemade efforts.Lisa says, "I am not the first person to ever make a Dorky Homemade Quilt. But maybe I will be the first person to define the category as a bona fide art form." Lisa's right, there must be thousands or millions of dorky quilts hidden in homes all around the world. At least that's what I prefer to think. My big question to Lisa is, why didn't you put any photographs of your dorky quilts in this book? I want to see what you call dorky, maybe it's not really that dorky at all. Lisa, how can we learn to be proud of our dorky efforts if you don't show us yours? Even us dorky quilt makers need a standard to go by!

A Fun Gift For The Quilter In Your Life!

Wait...first you should buy a cute medley of fat quarters to put with this book. :o) THEN you've got yourself an excellent gift! Lisa is very funny and very much like every other quilter on this Earth, a combination that makes this book a success. If you've been bitten by the quilting bug, do yourself a favor and buy this book. Cover yourself up with that half quilted, frayed edge masterpiece you're working on, grab a few cookies and some milk, and take some time out to giggle with the rest of us about our wacky obsession. Friends and family members of quilters: give your quilter this book along with a) some fabric, b) a gift certificate from the local quilting store or c) fabric AND a gift certificate from the local quilting store. If you don't know where to buy this stuff, ASK HER!!! She'll smile and happily give you the information, probably including a hand drawn map of stores in the area. :oD

Finally, someone who gets it!

What a great book!!! I had such fun reading it with laughs in every chapter! It's so nice to hear someone with a silly voice on a craft that is so fun. Lisa Boyer truly understands how quilting can get way to serious and she injects that bit of whimsy that we often forget when making a quilt. Every quilter should read this book, a very quick read and some much needed humor for a frustrated quilter.

How not to make a nice-looking quilt

That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons From A Parallel Universe by quilter, pattern-designer, and sewing-machine mechanic Lisa Boyer is a lighthearted and fun guide to making quilts that appear as amateurish and thrown together as reasonably possible -- or perhaps, how not to make a nice-looking quilt. Tongue-in-cheek guidelines such as "Keep in mind that the colors will fade after a hundred years or so. This being the case, you will need to start with really bright colors" make for quite humorous reading. The Dorky Homemade Look can be taken as a straightforward instruction manual for creating silly, scruffy quilts, or just as a hilarious parody of quilting; either way it is highly enjoyable to read by anyone who has ever put needle and thread to cloth!

Reminds me of why I quilt!

Lisa's prose just had me smiling and laughing.... it's like she's been peeking in my windows all these years. At times, her irreverence just mirrors my soul! We all have special scissors, cranky fabric, and dreams! I especially loved her take on seeing one's quilt on the wall at a show... my quilts too are private pieces, filled with memories and spirit and hope and joy and sorrow.You don't need to be a quilter to appreciate Lisa's take on men and rusty objects, or the trials of decision making! And since I have several friends who have had long arm machines in their living rooms, well, let's just say the shoe fits just right!And now if you will excuse me, I need to make sure the kids don't have the good scissors!