Can I make a modern quilt?

Now that I can sew a 1/4 inch seam consistently and have paper-pieced, chain pieced, and sewn curves, I’ve spent my sewing time concentrating less on learning how to sew and more on figuring out what I want to sew.

Last week the Modern Quilt Guild offered a free webinar for members by Heather Grant called “Design Fundamentals of Modern Quilting.”  She talked about negative space, scale, color, and grids.  Many of these aspects of design were totally new concepts to me—a little scary considering I’ve been quilting almost 6 years now!    My husband always asks  me to put into words why I like certain quilts, and now I have some useful vocabulary to help me do so.

One thing I learned from this webinar is that I’ve never made any quilts that are really, truly modern in design.  I definitely follow the modern quilter’s philosophy, but don’t necessarily follow the aesthetic when it comes to making design choices.  The most important thing I took away from this webinar is that I want to challenge myself to think more about what I’m sewing from a design perspective.

It was very convenient that I watched this webinar after reading this book.

I ordered this book from Amazon about a month ago, kind of on a whim as it was recommended when I was purchasing something else.

I’ve thought about this book and the people in it so much over the past few weeks.  I read it cover-to-cover the day it arrived.  It contains 1-2 page interviews/summaries of/biographies of notable quilters who are part of or have influenced modern quilting.  While some reviewers on Amazon complained that the amount of information was not in-depth enough, I found it to be just the right amount.  If I wanted to know more, I could Google that person and find out whatever I wanted to know or resources to point me in that direction.  Many of the people in the book are important contributors to modern quilting and I had never even heard of them.  Since watching the design fundamentals webinar, I’ve read this entire book cover-to-cover again.

With all this in mind, hopefully my next quilt will be modern in both philosophy and aesthetic.  My friend CeLynn joined the triangle quilt along by The Sassy Quilter.  I’ve always wanted to make a quilt with triangles and already had the ruler, so I cut my fabric last night.

This triangle stack is made from the darker prints from Lizzy House Constellations and a few other fabrics from my stash, and then solid creams, whites, and grays.  One of the words Heather Grant used a lot in the webinar was “graphic,” so I chose fabrics keeping that in mind.

Whether or not this quilt turns out to be modern, quilt alongs are always fun!