Brilliant piecework designer Ruth McDowell first shared her particular expertise in Piecing: Expanding the Basics and then revealed more intriguing secrets in Pieced Flowers. Now she turns her skilled hand to the vibrant world of produce in Pieced Vegetables. Artichokes, cabbage, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, and 15 other varieties may at first seem an oddly narrow focus for a whole book, but their rich colors, interesting textures, and widely diverse shapes are well suited to pieced quilt blocks. For each vegetable, McDowell provides detailed block and piecing diagrams, a photo of the finished block, and colored schematics proposing one or two ways that the finished blocks can be arranged into interesting, almost abstract quilts, just by repeating the same vegetable in alternate placements. She also provides a diagram of a very large sampler quilt incorporating one block of each different vegetable. Although written directions are sparse, the diagrams are excellent and the introduction offers solid groundwork on interpreting and enlarging the diagrams, working with templates, and basic piecework sewing. --Amy Handy