jenna brand

Here is my submission for the Project Modern 4 – Find Your Own Voice Challenge.

This quilt is called “Gate at the Lake” and was inspired by images of wrought iron.  It measures about 70inches by 70inches.

Brainstorming for this challenge was a real treat.  I looked over all of my past projects and picked out the quilts that I thought truly were representative of my voice. What made them distinctly “Jenna?:” Clean lines, bold graphics, a mosaic-feel, and a mix of textiles. “Gate at the Lake” hopefully encompasses all of these characteristics.

I mixed many different types of blue and green fabrics to create the sense of rippling water and contrasted this background with bold, black lines.  The quilt uses solid, cross weave, and subtly patterned fabrics from both designer lines and my humble stash.  I used mostly cottons but also featured a silk/cotton blend.   The stippling quilting design was intended to add to the sense of fluidity with the
water.

I sewed this on my new-to-me seeing machine.  It did a great job!
…and this is the back.  An ombré fabric in brilliant hues of blue.

I am incredibly behind on my blog reading, but I did manage to catch a big dose of the recent “Dumbing Down of Quilting” debate.  (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Google “Dumbing Down of Quilting” and watch the 100s of blog posts emerge! It starts HERE and then goes everywhere…).

I thought the original post made some good points – you do see an awful lot of the same kind of quilt in the modern quilting blogosphere.  That doesn’t mean that each one isn’t unique in its own way, and of course each quilt created brings something of its own to the table.  And obviously people can make whatever types of quilts they want to – it’s their time and their art (or craft – but that’s another debate *wink!*)

However – if you’re like me, you’re interested in mixing it up.  One way to do this is to look at traditional quilt patterns and adjust them (through layout, fabric and color choice, etc…) and make them more modern.  That’s what I love about Fussy Cut’s Farmer’s Wife Quilt Along. She’s tackling the blocks found in the uber-traditional sampler quilt and making them in fresh, modern fabrics.  Unfortunately, I am too swamped to follow the quilt-along, but it sounded like such a great project – I just had to make sure you heard about it!