One of the questions I get often from quilters, when I am visiting shows around the country, is about how to use large scale prints in traditional patchwork quilts.

For a fresh contemporary look, the answer is…just cut it up and put it in a block!

However many quilters have gone through introductory classes where they were taught to only use small and medium scale designs, when cutting up small pieces to go into a pieced block.

Here is one section of a quilt from the Tokyo Quilt Festival, which illustrates the creative use of large scale colorful prints in a patchwork quilt. In this case Kimie Yanagisawa has used many different designs and colors of Kaffe Fassett floral prints, in this beautifully colored quilt design that she calls "Start Again".

This is representative of a much larger trend in design – where segments and fragments of images are cut up and then put back together in a collage, which mimics web pages where fragments of many images are grabbed randomly and arranged into a larger overall image that represents all the options on that website. This is going on in web design, graphic design, home dec, fashion, and quilt design too!

So all of those old rules of patchwork design are being tossed in the air like so many fabric scraps over Eleanor Burns' shoulder…and when we see these randomly cut geometric shapes with a portion of the original floral design for instance…it has a unique and sometimes whimsical look… elevating the quilt design above all those old (*yawn*) rules invented decades ago by the Quilt Police.

This is where the *ART* comes into patchwork quilting. We choose our block design, our colors, we cut up our fabrics in unexpected ways, we play around with our block layout to create secondary shapes that we didn't anticipate when we started the process (unless we laid it out in EQ7 first!)- and Voila! – we've created something fresh and inviting, with a nod to the past, but a definite warping of creaky old rules that just don't apply to modern design.

Analogous-colored fabric designs work really well for this type of color experimentation. This means instead of using solid, tonal, or multi-color fabrics, we choose fabrics that have 3 or 4 colors clustered together on the color wheel.

Examples:
Blue, Turquoise, Jade, and Pear Green

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?catid=253

Violet, Plum, Magenta, and Orchid Pink

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?catid=130

Red, Coral, Tangerine and Mango

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?catid=254

In Kimie's colorful quilt, notice how she has used large scale analogous florals as a focal point in each block. She has grouped similar analogous colors together in larger groups of several blocks, and contrasted them with Cream ground florals to give a light and bright contrast of Floral Colors and Cream.

Go to my photo page where I have uploaded several other closeup shots of this colorful quilt, illustrating several ways that one can play with analogous color in a patchwork quilt.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luanarubin/

For those of you who love to shop our Annual Birthday Sale, I've added some more bolt ends to the sale categories.

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?catid=40

We still have 800 products in 10 categories, from 30% to 70% off, plus a Screamin' Closeout Deal on 3-lb Scrap Packets.

Be sure to throw them in your shopping cart and check out quickly for best selection!