After our long Easter break we returned yesterday to our programme for May. Our guest speaker was Sheena Roberts from Green Man Quilts who spoke about what categorises a quilt as modern with her talk emailed Traditional made Modern.
The first quilt she showed us was one that she had made for her son. So what aspects make this a modern quilt?
Asymmetry - from the ombre fabric to the stripe on one side and even the placement of the geckos
Quilting - most modern quilts have simple quilting - Sheena favours minimal quilting using her walking foot, although not necessarily straight lines!
Colour - although this quilt looks quite modern in its use of colour they fabrics were chosen based on a traditional Amish quilt.
Contemporary quilts use lots of improvisation - Sheena showed us how she took the traditional log cabin block design and made it contemporary by changing the shapes and using negative space. Sometimes her improvisations are because of design or fabric hiccups along the way but always end with a positive result.
Even the traditional sampler can take on a contemporary feel, Sheena explained the process in giving traditional blocks a contemporary feel by cutting at different angles and placement.
This amazing quilt sampler was the result of a worldwide quilting bee and just goes to show how many different ideas can come together and produce beautiful work. Each quilter was given the same colour palette and using their own fabrics created 8 blocks. The middle block was created using fabrics sent by each quilter.
Some of our members taking a closer look at Sheena's quilts.
