Making It Modern

When my parents and I were organizing and cleaning out their basement to make room for a basement studio for me (aka my spacement) my mom came across an old quilt top that she made once and never finished. I am guessing it was made in the early 90s? The design of the quilt is actually really unique, I havent seen one like it before. It’s also a color study quilt, and like colors are grouped together to make the pattern. It also seems to use a log cabin layout, but in an unusual way.

Close up of piecing

Now, I dont think this quilt is 100% my mom’s current style, and I know that fabric choices have come a long way in the past 20-30 years. So my dad mentioned that my mom might want to have me finish the top for her, and I decided to do it for Christmas, and also attempt to make it a bit more modern and something she’d actually like.

The colors are not my usual palate, mostly darker shades of red, blue, and green. So, I chose red to look for in a modern quilt since that would match her living room the best. I also bought a pearlized kind of polka dot fabric and added a 3 inch border around the edge to lighten the whole thing up a bit.

The whole quilt, with border

For the backing, I found a really great Japanese linen that I splurged on just a bit because the colors were perfect, I liked the large scale print, it matched the living room, it was modern, and it had birds! It was perfect. Plus it was also really soft.

It took me a really long time to decide how to quilt this. The pieces were too small, I thought, to quilt along every edge, and I didnt really think free motion quilting would look good over so many straight lines and points (which all lined up with amazing accuracy, might I add. It was impressive). Finally, I decided to straightline quilt along a break down of large squares on the front, which created a grid pattern. Then I used my free motion quilt foot to trace around the large flowers that are part of the pattern on the back fabric, so I quilted once from the front and once from the back. None of the quilting really shows up at all on the front, which lets the pattern stand out. I like how it shows up on the back though.

Back fabric and quilting

I chose a soft red and cream stripe fabric (from Crimson Tate!) for the binding and I really liked how everything tied together!

Back

It was really fun to combine something my mom made with my own work, and it was a fun challenge to work with fabrics and designs that I wouldnt chose on my own but that I think I added my own twist to. And it now sits on a soft leather chair in the living room, waiting to cover someones lap!

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