About four years ago I joined the Music City Modern Quilt Guild. At the time, I was interested in learning more about how to make art quilts. For some reason, I thought 'modern' meant art quilts. I was really disappointed the day that I realized modern quilts were simple minimalistic quilts and for some reason they always seemed to have grey backgrounds. And, there was also a lot of emphasis on negative space. The modern quilts didn't appeal to me at all. I didn't get it. I felt like a fish out of water in my guild, even though my guild members make and appreciate all kinds of quilts.
Back to the wonky star quilt. One day my quilt was at about the stage of Elizabeth Hartman's quilt below, minus the cat.
I remember staring at my randomly placed wonky stars against the rectangular shape of my design wall. And that's when I had my aha moment. The negative space jumped out at me. I noticed the artsy-ness of the placement of the stars. I started imagining more negative space and wondered what would happen if I removed one of the stars in the middle of that cluster. Or, what it I had pieces of stars wonkily placed in some of the negative space. It was a very exciting moment for me and I felt like I finally 'got it'.
I'm really excited to create the quilt that I imagined that day when inspiration struck, and I had my modern quilting aha moment.
I love modern quilts. I didn't know what they were called until now; they just always jumped out at me on Pinterest and other sites I've seen them on.
ReplyDeleteJared's great-grandmother made traditional quilts for all of her great-grandchildren and his parents gave it to us after we got married. It's beautiful. I wish I had the creativity, space, and time to make just one quilt during my life!
I love them now, now that I get it!
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