FREEformations
Jenny Dowde (Sally Milner Publishing)
AUD$42.95 / ISBN 1 86351 3582
Freeform knitting and crochet may seem like a total yarny free for all in which a more-is-more approach is, well, more—but author and designer Jenny Dowde proves by breaking it down into components that even the most out-there ideas will benefit from a few rules to bring order to the chaos.
She begins with basics of textile design—form, colour, texture, etc.—not surprising given the author is a painter as well. She also puts this experience to work in a section on colour theory at the back of the book (repeated from her earlier work, Freeform Knitting and Crochet).
In between, she offers good ideas for design starting points, ranging from computer graphics and fractals to classic works of art and graphic design and even shoeprints.
Freeformations also offers myriad tools to help put theory into practice: the book's ample midsection is a fascinating and inspiring treasury of single motifs and techniques; each is sharply photographed individually, with a clear brief on how to work each one.
A chapter of patterns seems to defeat the point of freeform, but taken as starting points they're useful examples. Whether they are beautiful will be in the eye of the beholder.
—Barbara Coddington