Modern isn't my thing, not at all. I love traditional homes with gables and dormers , clear fir floors that look like burnished chestnuts, and cottage gardens. That's my thing.
So when it comes to quilting, the same love for the traditional burns strong inside me. Fabrics from the Civil War era, and feedsacks from the 1930s, and the old quilt patterns like churn dash, and grandmother's flower garden. I love the colors and the style.
My quilting guild brings in some amazing speakers each month, and tonight a local quilter brought in samples of her quilts, and she shared her ideas for crafting borders that mesh perfectly with a quilt design. Her philosophy is to ignore the rules if they get in the way of your vision, and just have fun with your quilting.
After her presentation, she invited us to come up and handle her quilts, take pictures, ask questions, and perhaps be inspired.
I was.
I loved her sense of color. These greens and blues and chartreuse weren't colors I would have chosen, but they went together beautifully. I also like how she blends traditional with "wonky." Like these four-patch blocks with random triangles on the corners.
Once she arranges the blocks to suit her vision, she quilts the top by stitching "in the ditch," right along the seam lines. This stabilizes the top so she can let her imagination run wild with more creative quilting, like these random circles. With a geometric design, circular quilting can really set off the quilt.
Wonky works well with square-in-a-square patterns, too. In this quilt of more muted colors, squares of random sizes are framed with strips of fabric, then they're all trimmed to make blocks of the same size. Once stitched together into a quilt top, she appliqued stars of metallic fabrics on top.
This small quilt was quilted in orange thread, using a walking foot. It starts out with simple straight lines, but changing every inch to a tight zig-zag stitch, this . That little touch of creative stitching took the quilt to a whole new level.
Even though wonky blocks and modern colors aren't my style, I learned a lot tonight about letting go and giving my creativity room to breathe.
Wow! So creative!
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