quilting modern | Needle and Foot

The challenge presented to the Island Batik Ambassadors this month was to create a modern quilt. That’s it, there were no other guidelines. Talk about a blank slate! I decided to turn to my copy of Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pederson. There are so many fun projects in this book. For this batik challenge, I selected the Swirling Medallion quilt.

This project is quite simple. It is constructed of HST’s created with 4 1/2″ blocks. A subset of the HST’s have a triangle of black applied to a corner, improv style. (Basically a stitch and flip method.) Those black corners are placed so as to create some movement within the quilt (the swirl). Were I to make this again, I would have made my black triangles larger. There are places where they don’t touch each other and I feel this lessens the effect substantially.

The pattern would have you add another row of the background blocks to frame off the orange diamond shape. I didn’t add these because I wanted to hang it in a certain spot in my entry way and it would have been just a tad too large. I was careful to leave enough of a seam allowance so I wouldn’t cut off the orange points. Hurray!

Using a buttery shade of Aurifil thread, I quilted with straight lines in each quadrant. Once I got to the corner beyond the orange stripe, I changed direction and quilted on the diagonal, radiating out.

I am happy with the overall look and think the blue and orange are bright and cheery for summertime. My quilt model was in a mood. Can you tell she is two weeks away from summer break?

Island Batik has been incredibly generous with the ambassador program. It is time to share the wealth! Let’s have a giveaway. Just because. A batik celebration of sorts! First up for the win is this package of ten inch squares, called River’s Edge. It is a selection of earthy browns and blacks and there are two of each print for a total of 42 squares.

The second prize up for grabs is a charm square pack. This is a gorgeous set of charms with a theme of dots and circles. Blues, grays, whites, browns and some black make up the pack of 42 charms (2 of each print.)

NOTE:i Giveaway is now closed!

I would love to share these with two winners. Due to the cost of postage, this is open to US residents only. (I’m sorry!) To enter to win, leave a comment that will make us smile. Did you do anything fun over the weekend? Share with us. If you are a follower, leave a second comment and tell me how you follow. I will draw a winner on Thursday evening announce on Friday morning! Also, I want to remind you I have a newsletter sign up form on the right side of the page. I will be using my newsletter to communicate information about my shop. When I have new fabric, a sale or a fun event, I will send it out in the newsletter. I hope you will sign up and join in the fun. Happy Monday!!

If I had to name a quilter that I would most love to take a class from, I might just name Jacquie Gering. I love the work she does. Her style is so crisp and clean. Her use of color is exquisite. (She was, in fact, recently named 2014 National Quilt Teacher of the Year!) She blogs over at Tallgrass Prairie Studio and has a book out that she co-authored with Katie Pederson of SewKatieDid, titled “Quilting Modern”. I purchased this book a while back and have recently finished my first project from the book. This book is a great tool as I work to learn more about the world of modern quilting. There are some clear cut (no pun intended!) explanations of the use of color as well as how to do improvisational piecing. I haven’t really done any improv piecing and will use this book to get me going in that direction. I think Quilting Modern is perfect for the beginner quilter as it contains abundant information about the basics of quilting.

For my first project, I chose a wall hanging that is named Fiesta Wall Quilt in the book. It is a piece that involves a strip pieced square as the focal point and then some large borders around it. I loved this process. The strips are pieced into a large square and then narrow strips are sub-cut from that block.

The narrow (pieced) strips are then arranged in a way that pleases the quilter. Once that arrangement is done, those strips are sewn back together. It was easy and really, kind of fun to do.

In the book, they have a much more random placement of their colors. I liked this crooked path arrangement so chose not to have such a random style. I used shades of green and tan for the borders. The quilting was done with a walking foot and wavy lines. There was some pull on the fabric (in the center above the pieced square) that I am unhappy with. I picked those seams several times but couldn’t fix it. Reading Amanda Jean’s tutorial, at CrazyMomQuilts, on finishing a quilt, I learned that this can sometimes be alleviated by quilting the piece from top to bottom with each line. I was quilting in both directions (top to bottom and bottom to top). Next time, I will give that a try and see if the results are better.

Here is the finished quilt.