The designs for modern quilts can come from so many different design elements: architecture, nature, art to name a few. This week I will explore several design starting points for modern quilts,
Minimalism
The Tate define minimalism as:
an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle
but I also like this one from becoming minimalist:
minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it.
Really it is the old maxim that less is more and this can easily be applied to quilts and gives rise to lots of negative space. This is a wonderful example, Canterbury 2 by Debbie Grifka:
And of course it is not restricted to a black and white palette as seen by this quilt, Pencil Us In by Debra Jalbert:
The winner of the Modern Category at Festival of Quilts 2017 (the second year of this category) was a minimalist quilt, Sticks and Stones I by Judith Lynch:
Mid Century Modern
Mid century modern refers to a period of time, in the middle of the 20th Century, and describes the architecture, furniture and graphic design from the period. The graphic, geometric prints of of that time, click here for some images, can give rise to wonderful modern quilts, such as this group quilt , Organic Mid-Century Mod, that was finished and quilted by Laura Bennett
and Direction Optional, again a group quilt, pieced by Stephanie Ruyle and quilted by Christine Perrigo.
Modern Traditionalism
This form of design for a modern quilt starts with a traditional block which then gets changed in some way, that could be in scale, alternate gridwork, disintegration, colour choice and placement. This is a wonderful place to start your journey into modern quilting. A great resouce for this type of design is the newly released book, The Quilter’s Negative Space Handbook by Sylvia Schaeffer, click here to read a review on the book.
My quilt, Mini to Maxi – Churn Dash, is a good example of this. I took a traditional churn dash block and made it as small as I could without foundation piecing it. I then used it as the middle of the next churn dash and so on. Whilst I had an idea of what it would look like I made it without a pattern and wasn’t sure whether I would like the end result – luckily I did!
Be sure to pop back next week for the next instalment in the series!
Check out the previous posts in the series:
Modern Quilts – Fabric Part II
Modern Quilts – British Quilt and Stitch Village
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And back to the project …..
This week I have made quarter square triangles (QSTs) 2 at a time.
The tutorial for making these can be found in my shop – it is a free downloadable pdf called QSTs 2 at a Time Tutorial.
Here are the results of my making – the top row is Makower Linea, the middle row is Makower Linen Texture and the bottom row is Makower Spectrum:
And then some playing occurred with last time’s blocks:
Obviously I need more blocks to really create something but that will happen over the next few weeks!
Responses