Modern

Modern Quilt

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Just finished piecing this top for a “modern” quilt. What makes a quilt “modern”? Bold colours, improvisational piecing, layout, asymmetric design….

These are the fabrics I originally bought for the 2015 Craftsy Block of the Month quilt that I was going to make along with Nancy (@ Sew With Vision) but truth be told, I don’t particularly like that BOM quilt and the thought of working on it for a year wasn’t appealing. So I started looking at photos of non-traditional quilts and decided this one would do for a start.

I pulled more fabric from my stash so I was working with 20 fabrics in all. The intention was to create a colour flow on the diagonal, with the entire set of coloured blocks also on a slight slant. To make the coloured blocks pop, I sashed them with the background fabric so the whole has the appearance of a stained glass window. The combination of large and small blocks also added contrast to the whole.

Now to come up with something interesting for the back. I’m thinking a crazy quilt strip would work with this piecing. We’ll see once I sit down with the fabrics (I have enough left for several more quilts!) what actually comes out. That’s the fun part of this kind of quilt-making – I never quite know what I’m going end up with – that’s what I think was wrong with the BOM quilt – I really don’t enjoy following a recipe – I will continue to download the instructions for the blocks to see what new techniques I might pick up, but I’m not going to make those pieced blocks.

Pick-up-sticks Quilt

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I finished the quilt last evening. It got put aside for a while so I could work on the deck deciding what to keep and what to purge, and then deciding where to put the plants I retained and weeding them. They’d all been neglected for 6 weeks while the old deck was torn down and the new deck was built. They were all crowded into my neighbour’s yard (I was lucky she was willing to plant sit for such a long time).

A couple of days ago I got back to quilting the blocks, by yesterday I had just 7 double blocks to quilt. Got that done in the afternoon. Pressed the quilt to get rid of the markings (I use Frixion pens which disappear with heat – although the marks return if the fabric gets close to freezing, I’m told). Then I trimmed and bound it. Added the label last evening.

The front of the quilt consists of 63 (6 1/2″) blocks of fabric (which started out as 7 x 7 blocks), slashed either twice or three times, reassembled – while this looks like an easy quilt, turns out it was surprisingly difficult to do – each block had to be carefully crafted, the parts adjusted, pinned, and repinned until the underneath strip looked continuous! Three strips, if they crossed one another, was particularly challenging! However, I only made one block that in the end I discarded.
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The back of the quilt was inspired by an image of a white on red quilt (‘Lace”) by Weeks Ringle that I came across. I thought this would be the perfect quilt to try it on. Constructing the pieced strip took longer than I anticipated it would – although it was simpler to execute than the blocks on the front side.IMG_3152

Amazing World Map

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My sister sent me a link to this image yesterday with the note “Imagine quilts like this!”

Rachel Evans

Rachel Evans makes colorful world maps out of Spirograph-produced patterns.

Can you just imagine a quilt map done with large pattern fabric?

I’ve pinned the image on my Pinterest board along with many other ideas. I’ll probably never do a quilt like this but it’s fun to think about trying one.

Purple Quilt Finished

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Finished the purple/mauve “low-volume tiles” quilt yesterday. I was pleased with how the whole concept worked – the color family with a single contrast color. The quilting works well, too.

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The back of the quilt – just a simple strip to extend the width of the backing fabric.

Purple Modern Quilt

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I enrolled in a Craftsy class on Modern Quilts by Elizabeth Hartman. This idea was for a quilt made using a block structure but to have that structure not be obvious. Her quilt was done in greys with a yellow accent. I had this collection of quarter yard purple fabrics. I added the sharp bright green as a contrast. I made it lap size which required double the number of blocks (24) and I added a narrow border to each side to widen the quilt just a bit. However my modifications blend in so that you don’t see the border as a separate piece but as a continuation of the whole.