plotting a Revival
Do you remember 30 Days of Quilt Design? It was an Instagram challenge I hosted a few years ago, which was really stimulating for me personally and for others in our community. I definitely plan to host it again someday!
One of the designs I sketched during the challenge was inspired by some harsh realities during Eleni’s life. It was called Never Easy and eventually emerged as a quilt. You can read the story of the inspiration and see more of the quilt, right here.
Recently I submitted the design to Quiltmania, a popular European quilting magazine. They’d like to publish the quilt in their Simply Modern magazine, which means two things:
Thing no. 1 - I’m going to create a pattern for it! Eventually it will be available as a pdf pattern at Stitched in Color.
Thing no. 2 - I also need to re-create the quilt so it can go to Quiltmania for glamour shots.
Like most of my quilts, I parted with Never Easy. I see my quilts as practical objects that should be used and enjoyed, even if hoarding them would make more sense business-wise. I do have a small stash of keepers, but most find their way beyond me.
Never Easy was made entirely of Loominous woven fabrics by Anna Maria Horner. I would be happy to make it all over again in Loominous, but those fabrics are now hard to find. So, I’ve made a compromise. I’m using a mix Loominous from UK fabric store Cotton Patch and some new fabrics from FreeSpirit.
I want my new version to have the save effect as the original. In my first version I see lots of dark values: black, navy, charcoal gray. There are also a few bright colors: raspberry, turquoise and jade. Each row of spunky blocks contrasts light and dark fabrics.
The Loominous wovens are simpler than most prints, but not as clean-cut as solids. In my eye the irregular stripes and helter-skelter dots emphasize the rough edges of this design.
To recreate this quilt, I needed moody fabrics with rich hues and dark values. For starters, I browsed Anna Maria Horner’s current collections and prints from her Conservatory collective at FreeSpirit. Here is what I pulled together:
The lower value fabrics are arranged vertically with darker fabrics slashing across them, mimicking rectangles. My dark fabrics include that Bookhou print I gushed about earlier this week, one Loominous woven plaid called Shadow Path, three Kaffe Fassett shot cottons (which are solids woven with different colored threads to produce subtle color depth) and one Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton Stripe for a pop of yellow-orange at the left side, as with my original quilt.
For the lower value fabrics, I found two Anna Maria Horner florals from One Mile Radiant that were perfect. Then I really fell in love with the Birdseed print from After the Rain by Bookhou. Those Anna Maria Horner butterflies also fit quite well.
There were still some fabric “holes” to fill in my quilt revival. After a lot of thought, I decided I really had to have more Loominous woven. The moody colors and woven stripes add so much atmosphere! Fortunately, Cotton Patch still has a nice selection of Loominous available by the metre. Any day now these three should arrive, and then I can make a proper start of things!
Fingers crossed it turns out as good as the first version.
