Modern Quilt Month: A Celebration of Color

It's Modern Quilt Month here at Quilt Inspiration! We'll be posting a new modern quilt each weekday... we hope you enjoy our photos! Today's feature quilt comes from the Celebration of Color exhibit at the 2022 International Quilt Festival.

p.s. Please see our E-Bay shop for great bargains on patterns and vintage collectibles. For continuous free quilt patterns and blog updates, please visit us on Twitter.

Losing It by Randa Mulford (California)

In this intriguing original design, there is a progression of color and pattern from the upper left circle (which is a complete kaleidoscope on a lighter background) to the lower right, in which elements of the design are faded and/or missing. The background gradually darkens as the elements fade.

This colorful quilt has a poignant story. As Randa Mulford explains, Losing It started as a response to watching an elderly friend lose her memory and personality to dementia. Color and pattern gradually fade away, leaving only a suggestion of what had been before.

Image credits: Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2022 Celebration of Color exhibit.  Shown at the 2022 International Quilt Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Welcome to Modern Quilt Month ! part 3

We're celebrating Modern Quilt Month at Q.I., and we couldn't be more excited about these fun quilts!  So, what makes a quilt modern? According to The Modern Quilt Guild, the characteristics may include the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast, graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, and expansive negative space.  This is the third of five feature posts.

Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !

Decision Tree, 25 x 37", by Randa Mulford

Randa Mulford began this quilt in a workshop with Rosalie Dace at Art Quilt Tahoe.  About the title, "Decision Tree", Randa says:  Approaching an opportunity to retire (and the age for wearing purple and red!), I realized that life is really a series of decisions.  Some have trivial consequences, whle others are more significant, each an opportunity.  Every "leaf" on the tree represents a decision or opportunity." Each of the leaves on Decision Tree is unique and beautiful, made with different fabrics and embellishments (shown below).

Lilac City, 29 x 29", by Joni Strother

Joni Strother began Lilac City in a workshop with Colleen Wise titled "Emerald City." Lilac City is machine pieced and quilted.  Joni Says, "Colleen was such an interesting and fun person with whom to spend time and learn."  Colleen is the author of Casting Shadows: Creating Visual Dimension in Your Quilts.  Notice how Joni's quilt has darker purple strips at the right and bottom edges of each block, which creates the appearance of a shadow (shown below), which adds a three-dimensional look to the quilt.

Riotous Stripes, 46 x 52",  by Joy Palmer

Joy Palmer started this quilt by making strata of various solid material in greens and purples.  Then she cut up the strata strips into blocks and half-square triangles.  She says, "It was a lot of fun and very challenging to arrange my blocks into the finished quilt." Joy Palmer quilted Riotous Stripes with straight lines which bring all the blocks together.  She says, "I am not really a fan of the color purple, but it is growing on me!"

Liberty Skyline by Teddie Brannin, quilted by Jeannie Rogers

Liberty Skyline was awarded First Place in the Modern Quilt category, along with a special ribbon for Exemplary Machine Quilting - Computer Guided at the 2019 Quilt Arizona show.  Teddie says, "My skyline quilt is a fascination of mine on bringing different colors and patterns together to make a simple block pattern intriguing. I love the evening skyline with glimmering lights."

The quilt was inspired by Tula Pink’s “Skyline” layout from the book, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks. Note how Jeannie Rogers' quilting extends the vertical lines of the blocks, creating the appearance of a skyline.  Each block is unique and beautiful, and it must have been fun to arrange these blocks.

Circles by Lora Riordan

Lora Riordan's Circles quilt was created for the Riley Blake Fabric Challenge with the black and white fabric.  The circles were created with machine reverse applique. Lora quilted this modern piece herself, using an echo quilting design that surrounds each circle.  We love the way the quilting lines overlap, which adds a feeling of energy to this modern design!

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2019 Santa Clara Valley Quilters Guild show (Decision Tree, Lilac City, Riotous Stripes) and the 2019 Quilt Arizona show (Liberty Skyline, Circles).

Quilts Celebrating Creativity ! part 3

Here are more quilts from the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association 2019 show! The Santa Clara Valley lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California. This year's show, titled Quilts Celebrating Creativity,  featured some outstanding works by talented quilters. Here are some of our favorites!

(Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !)

Headed Outback, 46 x 42", by Randa Mulford

The colors and patterns drew us to this outstanding quilt.  Featured quilter Randa Mulford says, "Louisa Smith’s Double Vision workshop inspired me to dip into my sizable stash of Australian aboriginal fabrics. Once I got started, I just had to keep cutting out and adding more motifs from these fabrics as appliques until I had a whole parade of down-under creatures headed somewhere - to the Outback?"

Layers of colorful ovals create a sense of three dimensions in this contemporary art quilt. For more information on "Double Vision" quilts, on which this design was based, please see Louisa Smith's workshop page.

Flowers for Our Lady of Guadalupe, 27 x 27", by Carole Donovan

Carole Donovan says, “Freddy Moran taught a class using flowers cut out from fabric. We made a black and white background and glued the cutout flowers on the fabric to make a design."

Carole continues, "I wanted to make this quilt for special friends who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I liked my first try so much that I had to keep it for myself and made a similar design just for them.”
We love the broderie perse (collage) style of this original design!  You can see the raw edge flowers in the closeup photo, below.

Afternoon in Paradise, 24 x 33", by Randa Mulford

This wonderful landscape quilt was based on a photo Randa Mulford took during an afternoon visit to Paradise Meadow at Mount Rainier National Park. It appears to be framed, but the "frame" is actually a border made with wood-grain fabric! The quilt was begun in a workshop taught by Lenore Crawford. Randa says, "Recreating the scene with its late afternoon sunlight and flowing stream out of fused fabrics was a new challenge for me, but I like how it came out."

Marilyn's Home, 18 x 24", by Karel Peer

The Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association is participating in an exchange program known as "Quilts Across the Pacific", where each member has a sister quilter in Australia with whom to share designs, patterns, and quilt ideas. Karel Peer says, “This quilt, made for my Australian partner Marilyn Urane, is a quilted rendering of her home in Newscastle, NSW. [It was made with] commercial and hand painted fabrics."

There is a lot a detail in this little quilt; the flowers in this closeup photo were created with small buttons, and the windows and doors were outlined with embroidery floss.  The roof was made with ruched fabric.

Sufficiency, 46 x 37", by Therese May

This large, expressive fish was created by Therese May, who was a featured quilter at this year's show. She says, “This fish represents the potential for more and more abundance. [The] drawing [was] printed onto fabric and machine quilted.”

On her website, Therese May states, "I make the quilts that feel good to me and that convey what I have in my heart. I’m an artist, a painter and a quilter. I like to think in pictures and to share that vision in my art." For more of her drawings, which serve as inspiration for art quilts, please see Therese May's website.

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2019 Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association.

Quilts Celebrating Creativity ! part 2

Welcome to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association 2019 show! The Santa Clara Valley lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California. This year's show, titled Quilts Celebrating Creativity,  featured some outstanding works by talented quilters. Here are more of our favorites!

(Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !)

Samba Selfie, 39 x 39”, by Randa Mulford

Randa Mulford was a featured quilter at this year's show, and we are sharing several of her quilts today.  She says, "A selfie of my daughter and her friend dressed to participate in a samba parade during their student year in Chile was the inspiration for this collage quilt... The background shows the shore of lake Llanquihue in Puerto Varas, Chile, with the Osorno volcano in the background and fireworks over the lake."

Randa continues, "The biggest challenge was creating the contours of their faces and shoulders from printed fabric."  This quilt conveys the happiness and friendship the girls must have felt as they enjoyed the parade!

Radial Sonnet, 42 x 42”, by Randa Mulford

Randa explains that "Radial Sonnet is a kaleidoscope quilt, created for a challenge with the theme “sonnet.” (A sonnet is a 14-line poem with the specific rhyme scheme ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG). The central design has 14 wedges and the patterns inside the wedges reflect the rhythm of the poem."

We really enjoyed Randa's fantastic choice of fabrics, along with her use of fancy stitches to quilt the background circles, as shown below.

On Campus: Lewis & Clark College, 26 x 33”, by Randa Mulford

We love map quilts! Randa explains, "I began this quilt in an advanced composition workshop with Valerie Goodwin as a gift for my daughter upon her graduation from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It features a map of the campus in the center, with an image of the beautiful Frank Manor House (now an admin building) at the bottom and Mount Hood looming over it all (assuming it’s a clear day!)  The closeup photo, below, shows Randa's excellent applique and quilting techniques.

Glorious Clams, 60 x 70”, by Denise Martin

Denise Martin says, "[Fellow quilter] Joni Strother showed me this quilt in Quilter’s Newsletter. Carole Donovan let me use her magazine. This is the result, three years later. I had fun using fabrics from my large stash of beachy fabrics."

The Quilters Newsletter pattern description says, "Foundation piecing and curved seams make this a challenging quilt to make, but the beautiful results are worth the effort."

Sedona Opus, 33 x 69”, by Tracy Visher

Tracy Visher made this outstanding, colorful landscape quilt. She says, "My husband and I have a strong affinity for Sedona (Arizona), Santa Fe (New Mexico), and the surrounding desert lands. I have had a Sedona art quilt in my head for years and finally tackled the “prickly subject”. My personal challenge was to show the depth of the landscape and the many hues of the red rock formations."

Tracy continues,"I further challenged myself to figure out how to make a dimensional foreground, showing some of the native plants that live in these regions (like the agave plant shown above). It is the largest, most complex art quilt I have attempted to date."
The large embroidery stitches on the cholla cactus, shown below, lend an extremely realistic feel!

Image credits:  Photos were taken at the 2019 Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association show.

Quilts Celebrating Creativity ! part 1

Welcome to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association 2019 show! The Santa Clara Valley lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay in Northern California. This year's show, titled Quilts Celebrating Creativity,  featured some outstanding works by talented quilters. Here are a few of our favorites!

(Note: please check out our E-Bay shop for great bargains on quilt patterns, fabric, and collectibles ! For continuous free quilt patterns, please visit us on Twitter !)

From The Golden State by Judy Rudolph

Right now, the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association is participating in an exchange program known as "Quilts Across the Pacific", where each member has a sister quilter in Australia with whom to share designs, patterns, and quilt ideas.

Judy Rudolph says, "This quilt was made as my exchange quilt for Patricia Keevers in Australia. I drew inspiration from California's state nickname, 'The Golden State'. The center features a Mariner's Compass block using the Ruth Robin Fat Robin ruler. 

Close-up, From the Golden State

Judy adds, "The center was hand appliqued, and the compass was hand appliqued to the background. The machine embroidery design was from the 50 States Collection by Anita Goodesign. The compass was trapuntoed with an extra layer of wool batting and big stitch quilting was used to highlight the star points and the circular designs in the background."  We appreciate all of Judy's hard work and the beautiful results !

Daisy by Mandy Fleig

Here's another quilt made as part of the quilt exchange with quilter friends in Australia. Mandy writes, "This quilt features Daisy, my Australian friend's pup. As I have become acquainted with my friend across the Pacific, I realized how similar we are. I lost my beloved pup that was also a yellow Labrador Retriever several years ago. The pictures of Daisy remind me that no matter where we live, how different we appear, really we are all the same. We all want to love and be loved."

Close-up, Daisy

Wonderful thread painting work here really emphasizes Daisy's friendly countenance and soulful eyes. Mandy has done an excellent job in using a variety of neutral fabrics to highlight this yellow Lab's attractive markings.

Yosemite Falls by Jaunell Waldo

Jaunell explains, "I wanted to create a quilt introducing my new Australian friend to one of my favorite places on the planet. Picking a specific place within Yosemite National Park was tricky, but I finally settled on the waterfalls because it will give her an idea of the overall majesty of the park." 

Close-up, Yosemite Falls

We really admire this very lifelike landscape quilt which captures the texture of the rushing water, the large trees, and the surrounding sun-dappled rocks.

La Passacaglia Unravels by Randa Mulford

Randa Mulford was a featured quilter at this show.  She states, "This quilt was my first foray into English paper piecing-- I haven't hand-pieced a quilt in many years ! It's been a fun journey, which I've been sharing with other quilters making the "La Passcaglia" pattern by Willyne Hammerstein.  One goal of this quilt was to use only fabrics from stash, mostly prints by Paula Nadelstern." 

Close-up, La Passacaglia Unravels

Randa continues, "My innovation on Hammerstein's design was to 'unravel' the portions of the rosettes that lay outside of the rectangular perimeter of her design. This quilt won first prize in the Traditional Quilts category at the 2018 Chicago International Quilt Festival."  We certainly like this quilt, which is full of beautiful jewel-tone fabrics.

Hippie Daze by Mel Beach

To describe her quilt, Mel has selected a quotation from Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." Mel says, "Hippie Daze" originated in response to a particularly negative world news cycle. As I stitched out the background design, I gained a renewed sense of hope. Once the quilting was complete, careful cutwork revealed more of my hand-dyed fabrics hidden underneath.
Wishing all peace, love, and happiness ! "

Close-up, Hippie Daze

These giant vividly colored flowers and the tie-dyed motifs in the center really take us back to our youth in the 1960's ! We think this quilt is so cheery and fun -- a real day brightener.

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2019 SCVQA show.

Highlights of the 2017 Houston International Quilt Festival - part 1

We just returned from the Houston International Quilt Festival.  It's an awe-inspiring event with more than 1,600 quilts on display, and over 60,000 visitors!! It's hard to describe the scale and visual impact of this event.  Just weeks earlier, the Houston convention center served as shelter for more than 10,000 people displaced by Hurricane Harvey, yet the Quilt Festival was executed flawlessly! Here are some highlights of this fantastic show.

We're continually adding fun new items at very low prices to Quilt Inspiration's E-Bay site !

In the Mood for Love by Jing Chen (Beijing, China)

Created with machine piecing and machine applique, this quilt is inspired by a classic Chinese movie called In the Mood for Love (2000). The main colors in the quilt are red and black, which reflect the tone of the film and highlight the dramatic effect. Jing Chen says,  "The protagonist and background are dealt with in different tones, showing the nostalgia."  A closeup photo of the sepia-toned film strip image is shown below.

Ready by Danny Amazonas (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

"Ready" depicts a cat with an intense stare, ready to pounce!  It was part of a special exhibit called Freehand Patchwork by Danny Amazonas. He does stunning fabric collages using scraps and slivers of fabrics that are stitched to a background using invisible thread.

Fans of Kaffe Fassett will recognize many of these colorful fabric prints.  Danny says, "Since I'm using fabric to create my artwork, I want to maintain the beauty of the original fabric designs on each piece of fabric used. I was also inspired by hundreds of people, some of them great artists, family members, friends, and especially fellow quilters, who gave me kind words of encouragement and praise." We took many photos of this exhibit, and will show more of his work in upcoming posts!

The End of the Drought by Jan Reed (California, USA)

In the Embellished Quilts category, this small quilt captivated viewers with its beadwork representing drops of rain, some of which dangle off the bottom edge of the quilt.  Jan Reed says, "After worrying for 5 years over our severe water needs due to California's drought, imagine our wonder at finally seeing it rain... and rain... and rain.  It felt miraculous."

Jan Reed used machine applique, fusing, and hand embellishment, along with colored pencils and Neo Color 11 watercolor crayons to create this photo-inspired piece. Strands of seed beads are coiled to resemble a puddle of water inside the hand.

White Knight by Patt Blair (California, USA)

White Knight won First Place in the Painted Surface category within the World of Beauty exhibit.  Patt Blair says, "I love painting powerful animals... I had anatomy drawings for this piece for 3 years before I threw caution to the wind and improvised his mane, which I felt must be massive and majestic."

Jacuzzi Jazz by Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry (Washington, USA)

The vortex in this quilt was inspired by the spiraling designs found in many fractals.  To create an eye-dazzling effect, Caryl used rainbow colors alternating with their complements, an arrangement she calls "intersecting color and value gradations."  The techniques used include machine piecing, hand dyeing, digital printing and painting with cotton fabric.

Slices of Opulence by Randa Mulford

Slices of Opulence won Best of Show in the special exhibit called  A Celebration of Color. The dazzling design was based on Tomoko Tohno's Orange Range quilt, published in the May 2008 issue of Quilter's Newsletter (free foundation piecing patterns can be downloaded here). While Tohno’s blocks had pieced centers, Randa redrafted the pattern so she could feature the radiating medallion designs and different colorways of Paula Nadelstern's beautiful (but out of print) Opulence fabric line.

Magic Towns of Mexico (Pueblos Magicos de Mexico), presented by Quilters de Mexico

Celebrating the 111 named “Magic Towns” of Mexico, more than 70 quilters worked to create this large, beautiful piece inspired by The Berne House Quilt. You can see a photo of the two quilts at the Quilters de Mexico Twitter page, @QuiltersMexico.  Quilters de Mexico representatives were on hand to discuss the upcoming 10th Quilt Expo in Mexico City in February, 2018.  It sounds like a fun show!

The richness of colors in the blocks bring to mind the unique look of these beautiful and historically-preserved cities.

Image credits:  Photos were taken by Quilt Inspiration.