Quilt Design Less Often

Elongated Love Letters, May 21

It's been quite some time since I've done a Quilt Design A Day blog post, in part because I'm no longer making a designs daily. I love the creative exercise, but have been using my fifteen minutes in other creative ways this year like spending time in the library and analyzing quilts. Every so often though, I break open my software and make a design. I wanted to show you a few of my recent favorites and share their backstory.

One of my favorite recent pieces involves typography. Kim supplied us with an image of a vintage typewriter that had elongated ovals tucked in the background. I combined the two concepts and worked up a series of piece-able letters. At first I simply made 'Craig', my husband's name, and called it Love Letters. Then I just kept going. Above you can see the characters used to create a Quilt Design a Day poster-style quilt design. I'd like to revisit this soon. While working on it, I thought I might have found my calling.

Landslide Triangles 1, May 26

Landslide Triangles 1 came from a recent challenge week that we had called Stay Tuned. We were given a snippet of lyrics and palette, then challenged to come up with a suitable design. I considered the layering of music, and so layering became a secondary individual challenge for me to incorporate into my designs.

Landslide Triangles 1 was inspired by Stevie Nicks's Landslide which was re-popularized by The Dixie Chicks. We were given the following segment of lyrics:

I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide brought me down

Along with the layering, I wanted to capture the idea of snow sweeping down the hillside. Before you ask, templates for this design are already in the hands of an army of pattern testers. I'm really excited to show you the quilt I've been making and share few variations soon.

Wonderful World,  May 24

Wonderful World was my first layered piece from our Stay Tuned challenge. This one comes from the opening of the Louis Armstrong classic. It isn't nuanced as Landslide Triangles. I was aiming to capture the idea the idea of the beautiful, yet complex world that we live in. The lyric challenge reinvigorated my interest in daily design. I think I might continue with the idea as I find time.

Relapse, May 11

Moving from complex to simple, I'm really excited about my Relapse piece. I'm a fan of simplicity in design and feel like I struck a nice balance of stagnation and motion here. Often the pieces that come to me most easily are the ones I'm proudest of. They just feel right.

Teacup Storm, April 19

Rolling the calendar back are two pieces from earlier this year. I find it challenge to create improv-look designs in software. Teacup Storm is about the best I can do when working in 10-15 minute bursts. I really love that it looks improv from a distance, but in fact there's a striking regularity to the design. The name comes from the teacup image that was our inspiration seed.

Medallion Week 2, May 6

And finally I'll share my project from our second QDAD Medallion Week.  For one week, we work on a design, adding a border to it every day inspired by a new image. I wanted to create a sense of connectivity between my borders. I'm not sure that I'd ever want to make the quilt, but Medallion Week is always a fantastic exercise. Definitely pop through and look at the other finished pieces from the week. It's fantastic to see the varied designs that arise when a dozen people work from the same reference over a period of time.

That's what I've been up to. How have your own daily creativity exercises been going?