My Modern Voice - A Quilty Finish

I have a quilt that I finished back in February that I haven't shared here on my blog yet. 
I call it "My Modern Voice".

This quilt is my own original pattern and design although I took my inspiration from a quilt in Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen.  My inspiration quilt is called Fiesta and it is on page 122 of the book.  It is a square quilt with an orange square border on the outside, red square border in the middle and purple square border on the inside.  Then inside of the purple, is a patchwork square of print fabrics.  My inspiration was the patchwork and the use of solid colors.

I love patchwork and I think it connects me to traditional quilts but by the same means, I love solid color and the use of negative space which I feel connects me to the new modern quilting movement.  I consider myself a modern traditionalist because I love making traditional quilt blocks but I like doing it in a modern way and arranging my quilts using an alternative grid and using modern fabric.

So, My Modern Voice was my quilt that represents me and my current quilting viewpoint.  I sketched it out sometime last year and started it with the intention of having it finished to apply at Quiltcon.  But even though we sometimes have good intentions, we don't always meet our deadlines.  I did however, finish it in time for our local quilt show in March.

One of our modern quilting group members who is also a member of our local guild, was in charge of arranging the quilt displays.  We had about 12 or so quilts that we marked "modern" and she hung them all together.  We were all so grateful to Mrs. Sheryl for doing this for us.  I think it made our modern quilts stand out more and hopefully started a voice growing in our community about modern quilting.  

My Modern Voice
50 inches by 50 inches
All solids are Kona cottons
I used a jelly roll of Mediterranean Dreams from Quilting Treasures which I cut into 2.5 inch squares.
I used some of the jelly roll strips to make the scrappy binding. 
The back of the quilt is made from more patchwork, more solids and also some of the yardage from the Mediterranean Dreams line.
I quilted it using the Serpentine stitch on my machine to mimic how the inspiration quilt was quiltied.  I used navy 50 wt. Aurifil thread for the quilting.

Quilt back.  Notice the label - I'm really a stickler for labels now.

Quilt binding.

A Lovely Year of Finishes - January Goal

Last fall I started a quilt that I designed based on a quilt that inspired me in the book "Quilting Modern" by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen.  You can see the blog post and design here.

I don't remember when I finish the quilt top but it was sometime in October.  I've been quilting it with a serpentine stitch on my Brother machine.  But I've been doing it slowly as in only working on it in spurts.  I had hoped to get it finished in time to enter it in Quiltcon's juried show but didn't finish it in time.  I did enter 2 quilts in Quiltcon but they were both rejected as were all my friends quilts who entered.  I know that's been a big deal on instagram and facebook so I'm not going to talk about it here.  Quiltcon and the MQG is still growing and changing and I think it's going to take them some time to catch up with their audience.

So anyway, my goal for January's A Lovely Year of Finishes is to finish quilting this quilt which I'm going to call "My Modern Voice".  This is one of my many UFO's in my big ol' box.

Hopefully, I can also finish the binding in January but I'm not going to make that part of my goal because I don't want to jinx myself with too many goals :)