Review from The Quilter magazine

Get yourself a big box of Crayola Crayons and bring out the artist within! Terrie Linn Kygar's Melt-n-Blend technique for applique quilts involves blending hot melted crayons onto hot fabric. Terrie cuts out her fabric appliques and fuses them onto a pressing sheet first, then melts puddles of crayon wax right on the pressing sheet to one side of the motif. A paper napkin folded to a point is dipped into the wax, then Terrie begins coloring and shading her appliques. It's not rocket science, but it does take practice.

"I have taught this technique to eight year olds and eighty year olds," Terrie writes in her introduction to the book. "I haven't had a single student who couldn't learn the Melt-n-Blend technique." Besides crayons, Terrie uses colored pencils and black Pigma pens to shade, outline, and add detail. The results are gorgeous, with quilt designs that look like watercolor paintings. The book contains seven inspirational applique projects consisting of fruit and flower motifs. If you enjoy coloring and shading and are looking for something different, you might want to give this method a try.

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Review from Fabrications magazine

It's time for new fun with an old favorite medium, previously used in our childhood, wax crayons! Using the new Melt-n-Blend technique, anyone can create beautiful applique designs with a hand painted look that brings quilts to life. Terrie explains how to tint and shade luscious fruits, beautiful blossoms and more, using crayons, colored pencils and markers. There are 7 inspiring projects of increasing complexity to choose from, with something to delight every skill level and the designs will be personal to you every time. This is an interesting idea and could be amalgamated into pieced projects as feature.

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Review from Popular Patchwork magazine

We recently experimented with crayon techniques in the Popular Patchwork forum and I do wish we'd had the benefit of this great book to aid us. Terrie's techniques uses nothing more than ordinary Crayola wax crayons (not fabric crayons), fusible web and paper napkins to create gorgeous fruit, flowers, birds and butterflies with delightful jewel-like colours and a hand-painted look. She uses ordinary white fabric or pale batiks as a base and then builds up the wax coloured layer with an easy melt and blend method. Terrie gives excellent instructions on how to achieve this effect and claims to have taught everyone from children to grandparents to create this type of appliqué motif successfully. She has no problems with washing the resulting items either! This is a very interesting and well thought out, and well presented, process; this would be a great book for those who feel that their artistic skills may be limited.

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