Category Archives: Quilt Design

Beads on Quilts

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I was waaaay into beads before I got waaaay into quilts, so there are lots of beads in the studio.  Thank goodness they take up less room than fabric 😉

beads for quilts

A few of the bead drawers

I’ve read a bit about using beads in quilts, and I took a class with Mary Stori a few years ago.books about beads in quilts

Here are a few of my uses of beads so far.  Most recently, I added a row of tiny silver-lined glass beads around the edge of a star in my quilt for the Michael Miller challenge.  It took most of a day to get this done!  YIKES!

beads on quilt

I outlined the focal point of my Michael Miller challenge quilt with beads

A while back I made this little wall hanging as a shop sample for a friend, and put beads both on it and hanging from it.Wall-hanging

There are beads on the sun, and that’s how I learned that sewing on beads can distort the quilt!  I used techniques from jewelry making to create a beaded fringe for the bottom of the piece with larger beads.

And beads were used to give Overall Sam a fish in one block and a toy airplane to fly in another block when I made this wall hanging from a few years ago.  The blocks are based on a pattern from Eleanor Burns.Sam

SueFinally, I used beads to make fancy zipper pulls for some of my pouches.Whale-pouch

Give beads a try!  And if you don’t have enough beads, let me know…

Your Inner Designer: 3 Formulas for Modern Quilts

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It seems to me that, when learning a new skill, there is often a “formula” or basic idea that, once mastered, provides a way into successful practice of the new skill.  So here are 3 ideas for you to try.  See if one of them helps you create designs that you like.

1. Use lots of “negative space”, and start by making this background space in a shade of gray.  (The person who brought my attention to this “rule” of modern quilting has asked to remain anonymous 😉 )  Here are some examples, but I’m sure you know of lots of others:

modern quilt

Shades of Gray by Terry Aske. 2nd place award in the Modern category, Quilts Canada 2014

modern quilt

Found on lilysquilts.blogspot.com

2. Another common way to “design” a modern quilt is to make it an obvious take-off from a piece of 20th Century art (or occasionally more recent art).  My design below is by no means an exact copy of any of Piet Mondrian’s work, but it certainly is an imitation of him:

modern quilt design

Thanks, Piet! by Mary  J. Puckett

Sometimes I do see modern quilts that are a direct imitation of an artwork.  However, my preference is to look at a lot of work by one artist, or by a group of similar artists, then close the book and draw something original that “references” the works I’ve studied.

For example, here’s a print I found at an Etsy shop called “Handz”.  Compare it to the quilt just below it.  It’s not a copy, but it could have been based on the print.  Or they could have both been inspired by another source altogether.

modern art print

Mid Century Modern Art print found at Handz on Etsy

modern quiilt

finished – modern drunkard’s path by m_soto on Flickr

3. Just start with modern fabric.  One of my favorite “modern” quilters is Rita at Red Pepper Quilts.  Many of her quilts are traditional designs, but she uses bright, modern, fabrics and her quilts always look fresh and modern to me.

modern quilt

Spools and Nine Patch Quilt by Rita at Red Pepper Quilts

Here’s a detail of another of Rita’s quilts:

modern quilt

Detail of a quilt by Rita at Red Pepper Quilts

Give some of these ideas a try, and let me know what you come up with!

3 Favorite Quilts from 1 Quilter!

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When I noticed that 2 of my favorite 11 quilts at AQS-Charlotte were by Jean Larson, I knew I had to meet her. Luckily, while I was trying to figure out how to contact her, she contacted me! Jean has lived in Chattanooga since the early 1970s, so we met at AQS-Chattanooga.

First, as a refresher, here are the two quilts that attracted my attention at AQS-Charlotte:

modern quilt AQS

This quilt by Jean Larson won the Original Design award in the Modern Quilt Challenge!  The Modern Quilt Challenge exhibit was on display at AQS Charlotte as well as other shows during the year.

modern quilt, AQS Charlotte

The Market is Up, another quilt by Jean Larson

Jean entered a different, and maybe even more interesting, quilt in AQS-Chattanooga:

quilt AQS Chattanooga

Jean (right) and I pose in front of her quilt, “Barbed Wire” at AQS-Chattanooga

There are so many things to see in this simple quilt!  First, the design is tessellated!  Jean is a mathematician by training, so she explained it to me, but I’m going to have to ask her to write a guest post to explain it to you.  More on that later.

Second, those variations in yellow are for real, not just trouble with exposure on my camera 😉  The two yellows add complexity to the quilt.  And finally, although I couldn’t see it until she pointed it out, this quilt is actually a grid of squares in alternating colors:

Look at the quilting, too!

So, here’s a little bit about Jean:

She’s had several starts at quilting.  Her first quilt, in 1976, was a traditional log cabin made with the quilt-as-you-go method and using poly-cotton fabrics, which were about all that was available at the time.  Her second, in 1984, was an orange and turquoise quilt that she worked on while potty training her two adopted boys!  She began quilting seriously in the late ’90s.  In 2012 she discovered modern quilting through a neighbor, and she hasn’t looked back since.  She’s an active member of the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild and apparently knows everybody–numerous people stopped to chat with her while we were talking about quilts at the AQS show.  She had a quilt accepted for the first QuiltCon in 2013, and it has been published several places as an example of good use of negative space.  Here it is:

modern quilt

Lanterns, by Jean Larson, was accepted for Quilt Con 2013

Jean says she likes simplicity and alternative grid work in quilts.  She is inspired by geometric shapes and by fabrics–especially stripes.  She loves the mathematics of tessellations and plans to make more tessellated quilts.  I look forward to seeing them!

And I’m going to beg her to write a guest article on tessellations for my next design-your-own-quilt post.  If you know Jean, encourage her to do it!

Your Inner Designer 6: Copy Somebody Good!

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Truly original ideas in design are really, really rare  More often good designs are inspired by other good designs, and most designers start by copying other people.  There’s nothing wrong with that–just give credit!

Door with art glass window

Glass window, designer unknown

For example, here’s a door I admire in a friend’s house.  It got me thinking that it would be nice to make her a table runner with a design similar to the glass in the door, especially since the dining table is right by the door.  I may start out by copying the design, but my table runner won’t be an exact copy.  I want it to be obviously inspired by the door, but I probably couldn’t make an exact copy even if I wanted to.  And I’m not going to sell it as my own “original” design without reference to the door, either.

Here’s the first attempt:Craftsman inspired table runnerThat may be obviously inspired by the door, though in fact both are inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and Craftsman styles of design. If you don’t know much about those styles of design, Google them.  There are many similar designs to be found, so I can make LOTS of designs of this style without copying any of them.  Here’s the second try:Craftsman style table runner

This one has a little more detail.  Another master of this style, popular in the early years of the 20th Century, was Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  William Morris textile and wallpaper designs were the same historical period, and you may have seen Moda’s extensive line of William Morris-inspired fabrics.

One last try:table runner

So go look at some books on the history of design (the history of advertising works too) and make some designs inspired by what you see.  It’s a good starting place when you think you don’t have any ideas, and you’ll eventually come up with something your really like.  Then it’s time to make a quilt!

Here are the first 5 posts in this series:

Your Inner Designer 5: A Program to Make Your Own Palette!

Quilt Design 4: Choosing Your Color Scheme

Your Inner Designer 3: New Blocks From Old

Your Inner Designer 2: Many Block Arrangements

Find Your Inner Designer, Part 1

10 Quilty Secrets

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Several of the blogs I read have recently revealed “10 Quilty Secrets” and I thought it sounded like fun, so I’m playing along. If you would like to see some other bloggers’ secrets, here are the links: The original post seems to have been at 13Spools.com, and the idea has been picked up by several blogs I follow, including Catbird quilts, wombat quilts, and Christa quilts.

And so, here are my 10 Quilty Secrets:

1. Although I’m participating in Marti’s UFO (unfinished object) finish-a-month this year, I had FAR MORE than 12 UFOs at the beginning of the year. Oops, still do! Here’s the August finish, a quilt for Ronald McDonald House made from orphan blocks:August-finish

2. My nearest LQS (Local Quilt Shop) is an hour away, which I take as an excuse to have a good stash at all times 😉

3. If I start a quilt and don’t like it for some reason, I abandon the plan and turn it into something else–another quilt design, a table runner, whatever.

4. And sometimes those I-don’t-like-this projects just become long term UFOs 😦

5. In my world, a good quilt is a fast quilt.  I’m not patient enough for the zillions of little hand-pieced hexies, for example.cartoon hexie

6.  For that matter, I DON’T EVEN LIKE hexies!  Yikes!

7. I value good design in quilts and in other useful objects.

8.  I LOVE to learn new techniques and try new things, so I take lots of classes  Even if they seem like stuff I could do easily without a class I always learn something.

9. We’ve moved a lot, and one of the best ways I’ve found to make new friends is to join a local quilt group.

10. I think every quilt needs a little purple!

So, what are some of YOUR quilty secrets?

3 Perfect Ideas

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Pieced quilt, circles

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

1. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I made this quilt a long time ago to practice circles, and the quotation that inspired it came to mind recently when I was debating which quilts are “good enough” to be submitted to juried shows.  It probably is obvious that the design above is more interesting than the “perfect” one shown below:

pieced quilt, circles

Perfect Isn’t So Good

2. “Perfect” is well enough done that you are satisfied when you look at it, but not so over-worked that you’re sick of quilting by the time you finish it.

To make a perfect quilt, It helps to start with:

  • The right pattern for your skill level
  • Fabric you love
  • Techniques you enjoy (e.g., paper piecing, applique, whatever)
  • The right tools, well maintained

3. You may be more capable of “perfect” than you think.  It helps to have friends who keep you honest!  I recently had trouble making my seams line up on a medallion-style block and my friend Jerri said, “You’re too good a quilter for that!  You just don’t want to bother!”  Oops, she was right.

And here’s a book that helped me with “perfecting” my blocks:  

Sneaky Piecing by Beth Ferrier

I found this book with lots of tips on how to improve piecing accuracy and got a lot better with just a little practice!

I recommend the book if you want to improve some of your skills, too.

pieced quilt block

Swap Block–88 little squares!!!

And look at this lovely swap block with the corners all matched up!  It isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough 🙂

Your Inner Designer 5: A Program to Make Your Own Palette!

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I mentioned Design-seeds.com in my last post as a good color resource, but there are SO MANY others!  Today I’m going to tell you about just one, and I hope you’ll check it out and enjoy it.  Others to come in the future!

—Today’s Feature: Palette Builder—

screen shot from Palette Builder

Here’s a palette from a picture I took

It’s free!  It’s easy to use!  Anne Sullivan and friends have a fun app accessible from their blog at Play-Crafts.com.  Just go to the blog, choose PaletteBuilder from the menu along the top, and you’re IN.  You can upload a picture of your choice and the app gives you a palette that looks a lot like the ones on Design Seeds with two fun differences:  PaletteBuilder uses YOUR photo, and it gives you colors in Kona Cotton that closely match your palette!

screen shot from PaletteBuilder

Palette made from my quilt

But let’s say you love the palette in my “Study for New Mexico” quilt and want to use it for a quilt of your own.  Just find the quilt on my blog, load the picture into PaletteBuilder, and there you go.  The Kona cottons are chosen for you!

screen shot from PaletteBuilder

PaletteBuilder may “see” individual colors better than your mind does

This program may be especially helpful with a picture like the one above.  First, I wouldn’t have thought to put those shades of lavender in there, but I’m pretty sure they would show up well as shadows if I were converting this picture to a landscape quilt. Second, if you’re working on a desktop computer instead of an iPad you can move some of those little circles to sample parts of the picture that might have been left out (like the purple crocus in the top picture.)

So if you have a photo with lovely colors that you would like to see in a quilt, you can start here for your palette.  Now, go have some fun!

Here are the previous posts in this series (click on the title to go to the post):

Quilt Design 4: Choosing Your Color Scheme

Your Inner Designer 3: New Blocks From Old

Your Inner Designer 2: Many Block Arrangements

Find Your Inner Designer, Part 1

Quilt Design 4: Choosing your color scheme

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Of all the things people think they need help with, color is mentioned most often. Indeed, color can be complicated if you want to make it that way, but my preference is to make it simple. So here goes…

quilt design

Example 1: Purple Quilt

A good starting place is your favorite color. You don’t have to think too much about what that is. So start with your favorite color and then add colors that you like to see with it. Never mind that stuff about analogous color schemes being restful and complementary color schemes being lively. Yes, they are true, but if you do it that way you’re likely over-thinking it. If YOU like the color scheme, then go for it!  I love purple, so that’s what I chose for this first example.  I like gold with it, and the thought process was “I like gold with it so I’ll use it” rather than, “Gold is complementary to purple so I’ll use it.”  However, if knowing it’s complementary helps you, by all means use that framework.  I chose a grey background fabric because grey is “good this year”, as my Mother would have put it.

But let’s assume you want a color scheme kind of worked out in advance.  A common piece of advice is to pick a print as your feature fabric and then choose your coordinates from the colors in the feature print. That works fine, but it assumes you want a multi-color print as the focal point of your quilt.

One of thousands of color schemes all ready to use at Design-Seeds.com

One of thousands of color schemes all ready to use at Design-Seeds.com

There are lots of other ways that work at least as well. Color schemes are everywhere you look, and they’ve already been worked out by many design experts, from Mother Nature to New York City advertising specialists. Flip through a favorite magazine and choose an ad with colors that appeal to you. Take a snapshot of something pretty and use the colors you see there. Go to design-seeds.com to view thousands of color combinations.  You can subscribe to a free daily e-mail featuring some of them. Start a Pinterest board where you save color combinations that appeal to you. Above all, have confidence in your own judgment: If YOU like it, that’s good enough!

modern quilt

Color scheme is from a visit to southern New Mexico

Now, go practice by finding some color schemes you like and designing quilts with them. As always, designing on paper counts!  And if this wasn’t enough information about color to suit you, don’t worry–I’ll be saying lots more later!

What to do with Beautiful Fabric?

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I’ve been a fan of Moda’s Wildflowers collections of fabric for quite a while, not only because they are beautiful florals, but because they look just like spring in central Texas, where I used to live.Drunk-detail

Although this picture was taken to show the quilting done by my long-arm friend, you can see several of the beautiful flowers and get the idea.

But as always when I buy a piece of fabric I really love, the question is what to do with it that does it justice.  I finally had a brainstorm when working on a border designed by Karla Alexander for one of her stack-and-shuffle quilts.  It involved cutting gentle curves through several layers of fabric and then shuffling the layers before assembling the pieces.  Drunk-in-the-Garden

I chose some gold to go with my floral and cut large squares.  Then I cut curves in them freehand, shuffled, and sewed them together.

This quilt is called “Drunk in the Garden” and is intended to give the impression of a moonlit walk through the Texas hill country in spring.  Nature walks don’t go in a straight line, so the golden paths through the quilt don’t go in a straight line.  I threw in “drunk” because that comes to mind before “nature walk” when you see this wiggly path!

Best of all, I was able to use large sections of the floral fabric to show it off.

What have you done with favorite fabrics?

 

Your Inner Designer 3: New Blocks From Old

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There is almost never anything new in design; indeed, the best designs probably are made with a sense of history.  So far we’ve modified overall quilt designs to make new ones; this time we’re going to modify blocks.  So here we go: 1.  Stretch it:

pieced star quilt

Quilt made with Block 3

pieced star quilt

Quilt made with Block 4

2.  Tilt it, or stretch and tilt it:

pieced quilt

This quilt is made from Block 1, tilted, with half the blocks tilted the other way

3.  Cut it and shuffle the pieces; rotate them if you like:

pieced quilt

This quilt is made from block 7, with the blocks rotated various ways to make the pattern

4.  Cut it and insert something.  This will distort the block and you’ll have to trim to make it even:

pieced star quilt

Quilt made from Block 10 and a plain block with strips inserted the same way

All of this fooling around might be a good use for some of those orphan blocks–what have you got to lose?  And If you find some modifications you really like, try them out in a quilt: Please make some designs and send them to me–I’d love to see what you come up with!