I got interested in Negative Space when I encountered the artwork of Coles Phillips. He was an early 20th century American artist and illustrator who created many magazine covers using negative space. By using one color for both the background and large parts of the rest of the composition he could keep down the number of ink colors which greatly saved on printing costs (and made him popular with magazine editors). His compositions are intricate and appealing. But what IS negative space?
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This is my latest interweaving quilt design; I call it Just Squares V as it is the fifth in a series. I realized why I like these interweaving designs: they are kind of peaceful to cut all the different fabrics and arranging them weaving over and under. Kind of like doing a crossword puzzle. I have a vast fabric stash and I like to paw through it to find just the perfect print. This one measures 45″ square. It’s off to my long arm quilter for her to do her magic! I do love that gray Quilters Linen fabric by Robert Kaufman.
This is my interweaving design called Sixteen Strips. It appeared in the November issue of American Quilter magazine. In this version I used a multicolored confetti background fabric and pulled sixteen solid Kona cottons for the strips that weave over and under each other. This project is 50″ square.
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When I was in England teaching at the Birmingham quilt festival I did a little shopping. I found this print featuring stacks of books and couldn’t resist it. It was a slightly heavier 100% cotton print and I purchased 1.5 yards. I decided to make it into a large wallhanging by adding a pieced border on the top and bottom. Since the books are stacked both horizontally and vertically, it reminded me of a Log Cabin block. My long arm quilter, Linda Bang of Red Wing, MN, cleverly did free motion quilting outlining the books scattered across the print plus she did curlicues in the brown solid borders and rainbow variegated thread in the colored border pieces. I recently had to do several ZOOM meetings and I hung this quilt behind my computer station to give a scholarly backdrop!
Many of you are familiar with Shar Jacobson’s acrylic template sets. What you may not know is that she regularly will design a new quilt using an old template set, recycling the same template set. I thought that attitude was highly commendable and wanted to do it with my Fan Hexagon set.
Obviously you can use the whole hexagon in several different ways,
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Again, going through my scraps I pulled together enough fabrics to make this 14-color spectrum, interspersed with mostly white/black prints. You can’t see the details in some of the white and black prints but there’s a fabric that shows American landmarks (the Statue of Liberty is in the centermost hexagon) and another fabric that shows a village called “Quilt Town.” You will notice in the appliqued small hexagons in the upper and lower border that there is two of every color except yellow. That’s because I wanted the small hexagons to start and end in the “up” position and, because I absolutely could not find any more of one of the yellow fabrics (and if I had to eliminate the yellow hexagon from the top border, I had to eliminate it from the bottom border). One of the risks of working with scraps is you run out!
I wanted to go completely scrappy using the fan hexagon template set. So I went to my stash and pulled 15 floral fabrics to make up 3 fans. I used a white on white print for the background triangles. I alternated the way the fans were pointing, added a white strip on the top and bottom of the band of fans so the fans would appear to be “floating.” I scrounged in my scraps again and found a green and white floral for the borders. I did simple in-the-ditch quilting. I used an owl print for the backing, multicolored owls on white background. I really like the way it turned out and it didn’t take very long to sew up (took more time to paw through my scraps!).
In 2016-17 I finally finished a project I started in 2004. At that time a museum opened in my hometown of Hastings, Minnesota. The LeDuc House Museum was built during the Civil War for General William G. LeDuc. In 1958 it was donated to the Minnesota Historical Society but a series of events delayed its renovation and opening to the public until 2005. So when it finally did open up to the public, it was a big deal. (more…)
Late in 2016 I created an original pieced hexagon design. No, it’s not another pieced hexagon design with dozens of itty-bitty pieces. Don’t get me wrong… I am in awe of millefiori quilts and some of the other intricately pieced hexagon designs. I’m just never going to make one. I make BIG quilts; queen- sized is my standard size. I also like to complete my quilts in a reasonable amount of time, say less than a year. Those millefiori quilts have got to take several years.
So when I was designing the Fan Hexagon, I made it big enough so you can easily and quickly sew a large quilt and the individual pieces of the Fan Hexagon are large enough to show off medium to large scale fabrics.
It was quite an education to produce this set of templates. I sincerely feel for the guys in the Art Department at T&T Graphics who were unfailingly professional and courteous through my dozen or so revisions. At times it was like speaking two different languages: quilt-speak to engineering-speak. Anyway now it is done and I invite you to visit my For Sale page and see the template set.
