Creative Block Quilts

My quilt "Star at Sea" is included in the exhibition  Modern Quilts: Redesigning Tradition   at the Ontario Museum of Art. The show highlights the ways that "modern quilters consider traditional patterns in new and exciting ways." My asymmetrical interpretation of the traditional "Storm at Sea" pattern is an excellent example of this type of modern traditionalism.

I designed this quilt with a low-contrast background and geometric flowers as a gift for my mother, a master gardener. The shape of the flowers is reminiscent of the birds of paradise that grow in my mom's garden.

I'm entering my quilt "Reflective Windows" in the  Blogger's Quilt Festival  on amyscreativeside.com  in the "Original Designs" category. I was inspired by the blue shimmer of city windows. Once I had designed the basic block, it was actually fairly easy to put together using strip piecing. The final quilt measures 48 inches square. Depending on how fast I can finish up the binding, I might have another entry for this festival, too. Who knows?

Finished! I plan to submit this quilt to the QDAD Special Exhibition at QuiltCon 2017. It will be my first QuiltCon submission, and also first time I've made a quilt expressly to submit to a show. Exciting! I joined the Quilt Design A Day (QDAD) group on Facebook several months ago, and it has been a great boost to my creativity. I don't actually make a design every day, and I don't always use their "sparks." Sometimes the thing that inspires me is a beautiful rug, or an arrangement of patio tiles, or a stained glass window. But finding the time to sit down and design three or four times a week has really helped to strengthen my "creative muscle." So when the group's excellent moderators, Anne Sullivan of Play Crafts and Michelle Wilkie of Factotum of Arts announced the QDAD Special Exhibition challenge, I couldn't resist joining!! QDAD Group members were challenged to design and create a quilt, using a photo as a "spark." Afte...

Two small pieces today, made as special gifts for two amazing women in my life. I started with this angular block design: For the first gift, I wanted to use the colors of Autumn leaves.  For the second, I wanted to use black as a focal point. The black was a little more difficult to figure out. At first I tried translating the design straight over, as I'd done with the browns, but dark to dark and light to light just didn't work right with a black background. Finally I realized that the colors needed to be reversed . Changing the white background to a black background meant that the new "dark" was now the lightest color, the yellow. Once I'd figured that out, the design fell into place. I made the blocks about 18 inches square, with borders all around so that the block design would "float" in the center, and be more visible on a throw pillow. These were made to fit 20x20 inch IKEA inserts -- although next time I would make the...