Designing Away

Last week I spent six days at the Empty Spools seminars in Asilomar (Pacific Grove) CA. The class I took was called Taking Shape, and was led by Cathy Doughty of Material Obsession near Sydney Australia. For five days we explored color, fabric patterns and design all while using 60 degree angles. Hexagons, diamonds and triangles were the shapes of choice. I brought along a fat quarter collection of Cotton and Steel from 2014, and a few other sort of modern prints I had. All cool colored tones and small scale prints. Cathy’s fabric lines are all about Australia, big, bright, organic shapes, aboriginal dots and motifs, and the color pallet of that country. So beautiful, I bought some to make a quilt with on my own. The class was about designing a quilt on the fly, no pattern is needed, because all the pieces fit together one way or another. For me, I needed a little bit of an outline so to speak. I came up with a gem shape made up of triangles and hexagons. Then I made six of these shapes, put them into a star shape and then filled in the center with diamonds

The outer space is currently set in trapezoids using the woven striped fabric. I want to add a few more shapes, probably appliquéd to the background and a 2 inch border around the star. Then finish with a 4 inch triangle border using up the scraps from the inner star fabrics.

My design wall at home is covered in the second part of the Modern Quilts Illustrated pattern “Inner Circle”. I need to iron the seams open, thats why it has a bit of a curve to it. I am liking the contrasts between the light and dark pieces as seen in the photo to the right. Next up is cutting these big pieces into large circles.