A few months ago I joined the
Calgary Modern Quilt Guild. Its a fabulous group of ladies that meet up once a month and although I've only been to the first of the last three meetings I've learned so much and have been so inspired by the work I have seen everyone do either at the meetings or online.
I wouldn't consider myself a "modern" quilter but then I'm not a traditional quilter either, I am more a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of quilter (or at least thats what I tell myself!!!). I love and am inspired by all kinds of quilts and quilters. I would love to be able to create 99% of the stuff that I see online or at my Guild meetings but I keep telling myself that everyone has to start somewhere and that I know 1000x's more and am 100000x better than when I first started quilting 6 years ago.
Most of the time I'm drawn to bright, crazy, kid friendly fabric OR I go the complete opposite way and take the seriously traditional approach. That being said I do enjoy
most fabric but am a creature of habit and it shows in my fabric purchasting.
Getting back to the Guild meeting thing, every month we are assigned a homework block to have done before the next meeting. Being a HORRIBLE student and missing the last two meetings I haven't done those blocks yet {but please don't tell anyone!!! ;)}, BUT since I am totally planning on going this month I know that I need to get going on my block for this month. Last month apparently we discussed Triadic Colors and since I missed the talk I had NO idea what the heck that meant - thankfully Mr. Google was there to help me!! What on earth would I ever do without my good friend Mr. Google!?!? I found a few sites that helped me out like
this one.
I did a little research, got out my trusty color wheel (who would have known that one of those would be SERIOUSLY helpful when quilting!?!?!) and then raided my fabric stash. First off I came up with this:
But then all I could see was TRADITIONAL fabric and nothing that was very modern at all. I still love the color choices but I decided to see what other fabrics I had hiding in my stash that might be a little bit more modern and a little bigger since these were just small scraps and I wouldn't have had enough fabric for our block.
I went raiding my fabric stash yet again and found me some Amy Butler....I've had a fat eighth bundle tucked away for at least a year and I haven't know what to do with it until today! I picked my Triad Color Scheme (look at me dropping the lingo like I actually know what it means!!!) and then I was trying to figure out what my accent color should be.
I LOVE using cream/white but then I remembered that I got some awesome grey and charcoal fabric a few weeks ago that might actually work. I decided to lay all three colors down with my three possible accent colors and fell in love with the dark charcoal.
I have been inspired by the
Bee In My Bonnet Row-Along and was completely taken with "row 3" which was basically large chunky chevrons. So awesome! Plus I absoutely love love love the fabric that
Lori Holt designs and uses in her quilts.
So after all that rambling - this is the fabric that I am going to attempt to use to make my first attempt at one of our Guild home work assignments.
Hopefully Mr. C goes to bed at a decent time tonight (anyone have any idea how to make an almost 14 month old sleep?!?!) and then I can attempt to sew the gazillion little squares all into other little squares. I'll post the finished block when I am able to get it done, hopefully in the next few days. I've made great progress with the Domestic Handbag quilt and the Eye Spy quilt lately. I just need to get around to actually finishing stuff one of these days!
Is anyone else impressed that I managed to take something as simple as picking out fabric for a quilt block and turned it into a semi-essay on my lack of Modern Quilting knowledge?!? Heck, I am!! ;) Then again picking out fabric is always a challenge for me, perhaps thats another Blog post for another day!
