23 Oct Early Inspirations

I had probably been quilting about three years when I stumbled across The Modern Quilt Workshop by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr of Fun Quilts. I was in the process of trying to figure out what kinds of quilts I wanted to make. I had seen many, many quilts that I thought were beautiful, but many of them clearly weren’t me. But what was me?

At the time, it seemed to me like the quilt world was divided between traditional quilts and art quilts. I enjoyed the materials used in the traditional quilts – fabric, batting and thread. I also admired the breaking away from tradition of the art quilts, but had no interest in unusual fabrics or paint or beads or all the other embellishments that seemed (to me at the time) to be required for this style.

Enter The Modern Quilt Workshop. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I first opened this book. I hadn’t seen quilts like this before. Clearly modern and contemporary and made with traditional methods and materials. This was what I wanted to do!

The book was different from other quilt books I had seen too. In addition to the pattern for each quilt, Weeks and Bill also offered variations in color and layout. I loved seeing how a particular quilt looked in different color variations. As soon as I devoured The Modern Quilt Workshop, I ran right out and got Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop, which has abundant information on color and value in quilts.

If you aren’t familiar with Weeks and Bill, check out their website at www.funquilts.com and Weeks’ blog at www.CraftNectar.com.