I love to hear about everyone’s design process. For everyone it’s different. For me it is key to see the whole design in my head before I actually cut fabric. I have been learning Illustrator and Design and luckily I can quickly draw
Our design parameters are as follows:
- 60″ x 60″ final quilt size
- Just use fabric from the box (we could ask for more for background fabric if needed)
- Inspired by the style of Denyse Schmidt’s book Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration
First, have you seen Denyse’s book??
She captures the beauty of many traditional patterns and presents us with gorgeous clean modern versions. So, of course I started looking at antique and vintage quilts. There were two quilts that I kept coming back to. One was quilts made from variations on the Birds in the Air:
and the other was Sugarloaf Quilts:
I figured I could make these modern. These are the traditional blocks:
Birds in the Air Quilt Block
Sugarloaf Quilt Block with Traingles
Sugarloaf Quilt Block with Diamonds
I’ve been working with paper pieced half rectangle triangles (HRT’s) a lot lately in my designs so I guess they had been on my mind so I started to play with ideas that I could incorporate them into these traditional layouts. I haven’t seen HRT’s much in antique quilts but, if you substitute them for HST”s or combine them to form regular triangles. Then walla! These were the rejects. 😉 All of which I would still like to make into quilts!
I knew I wanted colorful but, not rainbow-y and I knew I didn’t want to use white for my background fabric. But, to decide what to use when you have 75 colors. Due to my heavy work travel schedule, I waited too late to request extra fabric from Free Spirit. Luckily I live in LA with awesome local stores and Sew Modern had two choices that are also included in the Denyse Schmidt Modern Solids Fat Quarter Box – Spark Gold and Sand Dune. My decision was narrowed down.
It is interesting how just changing the background color changes the look and feel of the quilt.
Then it hit me – I can use both! I’m so excited with how this is coming out. . .
