Precision vs. Improv
I’m primarily a traditional quilter- I love making star blocks and flying geese, and quilting feathers. However, I also love to learn new things and the variety of techniques to explore as a quilter are endless. My first quilts utilized a rotary cutter and machine piecing, but I used many more traditional techniques as well. In the more than 20 years I have been quilting, I have also pieced quilts using templates as was common in times past, hand-pieced and hand-quilted. As a quilter I appreciate precision and accuracy, so I enjoy trying all the new gadgets and tools available to improve my piecing. Show me a new, more efficient way to do something and I’m sold!
During my quilting journey, I have read countless books and magazines, taken classes at shows and the local shops, and in more recent years, online classes. As I began longarm-quilting I took a lot of classes on quilting traditional designs. Then I started noticing classes on “Modern Quilting.” Always wanting to increase my skills, I’ve taken a variety of classes on different “modern” quilting designs. It’s amazing what you can do with negative space and straight lines!
“Modern Simplicity Quilting Designs”
One class I took online was Jodi Robinson’s “Modern Simplicity Quilting Designs.” After going through all the designs and drawing them, I decided I would make a more abstract quilt to practice stitching them. Modern quilting “rules” suggest using lots of solids, improvisational piecing, and lots of negative space for dense quilting. This project confirmed something I already suspected: spontaneity is not my thing.
Simply Spontaneous- I’m Not
Planning and piecing- I mean improvising
To make this original quilt (“Simply Spontaneous- I’m Not”), I layered some fat quarters I had purchased for my “Dear Jane” blocks (that’s another story) and randomly cut them. I admit I used a rotary cutter and straight edge- but I ignored all markings. I rearranged the cut pieces and sewed them together. Then I randomly cut up the pieced blocks, and rearranged the pieces again. Next, I added some wonky sashing, and I made a second set of blocks with abstractly placed skinny strips of lime green in the modern gray background fabric. This also created negative space to quilt. My need for uniformity took over, and I squared up the blocks. I spent a long time figuring out what would be the most eye pleasing layout. At this point, the name of the quilt should make sense.
Quilting
When it came to quilting the piece, my original plan was to randomly divide the space with channels and do different designs in each space. That didn’t last long. The first few spaces were great, but then I used a different design and hated how it looked. Despite my resolve not to rip anything out, I spent a considerable amount of time picking out tiny stitches. After that my quilting was much more planned, and though the spaces I created were somewhat random, there was a lot less spontaneity than I originally intended. I didn’t use many of the designs from the class, but I really like the ones I was able to use.
Here is “Simply Spontaneous- I’m Not”, 36” x 36”, Designed, Pieced and quilted by Krista Ellis, May 2018
A few modern client quilts
Cube of Life Quilt
One of my local quilt shops (Quilter’s Common in Wakefield, MA) offered a class called “Cube of Life” which was instructed by the pattern designer. The pattern is a modern take on a traditional tumbling blocks quilt and is paper pieced so there are no “y” seams. It must have been a good class because over the course of several months, I got three of them to quilt. I knew one client was going to request that I quilt it like the sample, and after much contemplation, I ended up doing something similar for all three. Figuring out an efficient stitching path was a challenge for me. Although it was a class with a specific pattern and color ideas, one of the things I love about these cube quilts is each quilter did something to make it their own.
Martha wanted to make the quilt bigger for a young grandson that loved it. Figuring out how to bring the quilting design out to the borders was a challenge, but her design works well . January 2019
Lynn showed me the quilt first and wanted it like the class sample. I hope I did it justice! February 2019
Susan needed to make the quilt bigger for her son and used a slightly different palette. Her border treatment needed a different design approach, so I used the ideas from another class I took at MQX several years ago (Krista Withers’,“Ghost Shapes”). This one has ghost cubes and diamonds to add some interest. I had fun trying to make them tumble in different directions. May 2019
Cadence Court
Shortly after finishing the cubes, I quilted several “Cadence Court” quilts. This was another class offered by Quilter’s Common. I was fascinated by this quilt and have plans to do one in hand dyed fabric someday- or did before I quilted three of them! Now I’m not sure I want to tackle that much paper piecing. I felt like these all required some stitch in the ditch work to make the piecing pop, as well as some straight-line quilting in the diamonds.
Ruth’s quilt was the one I received first and I used a combination of design ideas from the samples in the pattern book. I really liked the echoing of the circle and the radiating lines. June 2019
Linda added a migrating geese border to make the quilt larger, which meant I needed to approach it differently. She wanted something a little simpler, so I did a lot less ruler work other than the stitch in the ditch. The loops and swirls were fun to quilt and this was a good exercise in trying to keep things simple. June 2019
Barbara wanted something pretty in the center and to keep in simpler, so I used what I did on Linda’s as a starting point with a few variations to make it different. September 2019
Quilting these quilts that gave me an opportunity to look at things a little differently, inspired my creativity, and expanded my skills. Every time I worked on one of them I thought about how much I enjoy quilting. It fascinates me how simple changes in the color placement, quilting design, or borders can make a quilt unique. I appreciate every quilt that crosses my path!
