Creative Nudge – Make it Your Own

In my Saturday night newsletter, I mentioned a
quilt in the
Birmingham Quilt Festival with a Scottish Thistle. Today I want to show you
a detail of that quilt, because of the amazing quilting in the background.

One of the trends we are seeing is tons of creative doodle-quilting in the
backgrounds of modern quilts. What might appear to be blank, or just negative
space in a quilt, turns out to be full
of unique machine-quilting upon closer inspection.

If you read my reviews from QuiltCon
(or read my article about Modern Quilts in the recent
issue of McCalls Quilting Magazine), you are aware that there has been an
upswing in younger quilters becoming very proficient on longarm machines. A lot
of the quilts at QuiltCon
were pieced by one person, and then quilted on a longarm by a second quilter.

This Scottish Thistle quilt was made by one person, and even though it is not
technically a modern quilt (it has an appliqued flower) there are elements of
modern quilting here. You can click through to my photo page to see
more detail shots, and an image of the whole (large!) quilt by Kay Bell.

The
most creative quilts come from those who don't follow the rules, but
explore the place in between the trends, the descriptive labels, and the latest
techniques or media. We see elements of old and new here, but in this
combination, we see something unique and fresh.

So the moral of the story is…don't look to others' guidelines and rules when
creating. Identify the trends and then break the rules. Make it beautiful or
make it edgy, as you wish, but make it your own and show off your talent in
your own way!

Our first few videos from Birmingham are going up tomorrow on our video page,
so keep an eye out for the first of several Birmingham video reviews and
interviews.

* The quilt detail above is from Kay Bell's quilt "Inner Circle, Flower of
Scotland", photographed at the Quilt Festival in Birmingham UK. *