BAM BOM Finish

Dan and I had a quiet Thanksgiving. It was just the two of us enjoying his talented cooking skills. He made us a 13 pound turkey, so there will be no dearth of leftovers (they're in the freezer). I contributed homemade French bread, and a no-bake pumpkin pie - the one in the graham cracker crust with cream cheese and vanilla pudding. It's a family favorite.

I also sewed a lot between turkey day and today, happily completing two of my three entries into QuiltCon East 2017. After last year's huge disappointment with "Prism" not being juried into QuiltCon 2016, I'm not allowing myself to be hopeful about any of these three quilts being accepted. The competition is quite stiff! I am a little smarter though, understanding now that accepted QuiltCon quilts are most often "original design." Well, all three of mine are original. This is one of them. The other two are entries in the Nine Patch Challenge, and the Michael Miller Luxe Fabric Challenge.

In October I finished my no-name Bay Area Modern Block of the Month. This quilt started as a 2013 block-of-the-month with Central Florida MQG members - though only four of us actually did it!

I took my blocks to an "Alternate Grid" workshop with Lee Heinrich, when she visited our chapter last February. From that class, I came up with the layout. The finished quilt size is 47" x 58".

Quilting designs were figured out as I went along, using some favorite quilting patterns, and designs from books by Angela Walters and Christa Watson.

The backing ended up being a hodgepodge of orphan blocks and fabric chunks. While I love the way it looks, it wasn't easy to quilt! When seams on the front were on top of seams on the back, my machine "chunked" it's way over them.

This is the first block we made in the series, and it's my favorite because of the Florida theme. Unfortunately, because the quilt front blocks are on point, this block worked only on the quilt back.

When I'd finished this quilt, I visited the Bay Area Modern website, and commented about my finish. Their blog editor asked for details and pictures, and ending up writing a post about my finish. So nice!

When I strike up a conversation with a new quilter, and I remark that I make modern quilts, I'm often asked, "What's a modern quilt?" That's when I become frustrated because it's difficult to define modern in tangible terms. Sure, I say, "Modern, clear-colored fabrics; asymmetrical designs; use of negative space; improvisation..." - all the buzz words - but that doesn't usually help their understanding. Then I end up saying, "Do a Google search and you'll find examples."

So when I recently received a newsletter from Make Modern magazine, an Australian digital publication, that provided a link to their modern quilts pattern gallery, I thought, this is where everyone should be looking to see great examples of modern quilts. Enjoy. Linda