Recently a new fabric shop, Superbuzzy, opened only six blocks from my home. I’ve walked by it a few times and thought it was a scrapbooking/paper craft store. Finally, I took another look in the window, and saw racks of beautiful fabrics! Mostly bright solids & modern Japanese prints. Japanese, not Asian, the very latest trends. Very different from the other quilt shops in my area- intriguing. I had a great time looking through the fabric, and chatting with the sales girl, Misty, who invited me to the next guild meeting at the shop-the Modern Quilt Guild of Ventura. Modern Quilts? Now, I’ve seen many art quilts online, but they aren’t necessarily ‘Modern’. So, I decided to do a little research.
I found: Modern quilting is a rapidly growing movement, which began online and is now meeting in the ‘real’ world to create a modern aesthetic. This is accomplished through fabric selection, asymmetry, increased use of negative space, & the improvisation of traditional blocks. The emphasis is to make functional rather than decorative quilts, to embrace simplicity & minimalism, and to be able to finish quilts on home sewing machines. Modern quilts are inspired by modern art & architecture, contain bold colors & graphic prints, and often use gray & white as neutrals. All very interesting, I looked forward to the meeting. I’ve been to two of the guild’s meetings now, and am even more interested. I’ve always loved the geometry of traditional quilting-all the pieces meeting & fitting together so precisely. The repetition of the blocks & the secondary patterns that they can create. I’ve spent years gaining the necessary skills to create these blocks, but the freedom to color outside the lines is appealing.
The Modern Quilt Guild recently finished “100 Days of Modern Quilts” on their website. Here are some of the quilts that I found appealing:
This is ‘Life in Technicolor’ by Jacquie Gering. Brightly colored solids & prints, and improvisational blocks. A white background with exquisite quilting.
This quilt is also by Jacquie Gering, ‘Proposal Moon. I love the contrast of the bright orange against the shades of gray background. And again, the quilting is just beautiful.
This third example is ‘Embracing Grey’ by Alissa Haight Carlton. Again, a fairly simple design with a bright, solid yellow, gray & white background. Though the patterns are fairly easy to construct, they have impact. The heavy quilting is subtle, but the commitment of time & patience….
To see the other quilts featured go to: 100 Days of Modern Quilts-
Fueled with enthusiasm, I brought out a project I’d started, but thought it was just boring. It began as a French Country inspired table runner, but-
Now that I have all this ‘negative space’-what do I do with it?
I decided to just quilt in horizontal lines and:
vertical lines. In modern quilting there are no “quilt police”. I didn’t even mark the lines to make them perfectly straight. I felt so naughty! I’m happy with the finished table-runner, but I don’t think that I’ve found my “modern” aesthetic, yet.
Bye for now & keep smiling-Carole
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- Jacquie Gering (quiltingismytherapy.com)
