Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The Jelly Roll Quilt


 


This is a very modern looking quilt, and it should probably get a modern quilting design. What is a modern quilting design? Well, just like the quilt itself, the designs being used on modern quilts today are very simple; straight lines, wavy lines, pebbles and simple circles.



 



But, that's not what this quilt top maker wanted. You see, this is actually the second one she has handed me to quilt. For the first one (sorry, long enough ago that no pictures), I tried to quilt each colored stripe with a different sashing design. Wow, that was kind of hard. 40 different designs?!! When you do that, it is inevitable that some designs will look great and some, well, not so great.



But, my customer loved it and wanted this one done exactly the same.



To improve on the last one, this time I decided to choose just a few designs and repeat them randomly. That way, I could pick my favorites. And, I think the piece has a less “jumbled” look to it, too.



 



Then, I used a swirl doodle fill in the white spaces to set it off.



 



Here's a couple of different looks at it.
 


 
 


Generally, my philosophy on picking out quilting designs for a piece is to keep it simple. Not too many designs, and they should coordinate with each other in size and style. This quilt is the result of breaking that rule!




We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful quilting! I really like the swirly doodle in the white sections. Nicely done. Not sure I would have been brave enough to do this many different designs, but you made it look beautiful.

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  2. Hi! I saw your swirls on Pinterest and came to check out the post. I love your strip quilting. The quilting is actually right up Modern's current alley. I don't think most modern folks would let a quilt made of batiks be called modern unless it was super "out there," but it's interesting to watch how their quilting has expanded so that it still embraces the clean, simple, straight-line look, but also explores hyper-quilting with a variety of motifs. So this quilting still fits in the genre. That's the fun of strip quilts - you can explore with a larger variety of designs and it'll work for you like this does. Love your work on it. :)

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