New York Beauties & Flying Geese

Carl Hentsch and Tula Pink have their very own mutual appreciation society. They met several years ago in a New York Fabric store where her first question to him on seeing his stunning quilt tops was ‘Who are you?’ (in the same incredulous, slack-jawed way that you might ask David Blaine after seeing one of his magic tricks). They are now firm friends; she admiring his patterns for their architectural and complex beauty and he admiring Tula’s flair for fabric and colour. Tula has contributed to this book and has waved her multicoloured fairy dust throughout, but all the patterns belong to Carl and there are plenty of them. He’s done that very clever thing of taking one technique and almost deconstructing it; putting the pieces back together in a whole host of new and exciting ways. The building blocks are reassuringly familiar and consist mainly of pieced and plain arcs and fans but the layouts with their overlapping circles, oversized elements and sinuous organic flow are something special. All the designs are variations of the New York Beauty block and you’ll need to be comfortable with foundation piecing and curved piecing. Anyone new to these techniques can read through The Basics at the front of the book. Each quilt pattern comes with an accompanying cushion pattern based on the same design; useful if you want to try out the techniques on a smaller scale project. The Twin Dragons quilt is based on the legend of Yin and Yang and is a free-flowing design shot through with purposeful Flying Geese to emphasise movement and direction. The coming together of these two talented collaborators is a yin-yang moment in itself. * Popular Patchwork *