Modern Solids Quilt Along at Patchwork Squared

 

I was reading the feature post today over at Fat Quarterly and they featured a new pattern company owned by two man quilters (Yippee!) called Patchwork Squared. These guys have a great aesthetic and guess what they just wrapped up? A Modern Solids Quilt Along!! This quilt looks awesome and even though it’s “finished” on the blog (apparently it started in March! Where was I?) You can still read all the posts and work as your own pace. Now, they feature Kona cottons in their posts but you can still use Moda Bella solids (especially since you can get them for only $5.99 a yard right now in my shop). As I understand it, there is a flickr pool just for this QAL as well. So, I highly encourage you to go check it out for some Modern Solid quilt inspiration!

Here’s the digital form of the finished quilt:

I just love those colors! Yeah for solids! Yeah for modern quilts! More to come soon.

Happy Stitches,

Anna

Summer Solids Sale!

Did you know that it’s a personal goal of mine to carry every single one of the over 100 different Moda Bella Solids in my shop? Bella solid fabrics are such a great go-to item to have in anyone’s stash. Moda’s fabrics have a beautiful feel to them, it’s obvious that they are up there with the best quality solids in the industry. Need a backing fabric? Why not a solid? Need to add a little more color without overpowering your quilt? Add a solid. Want something that is economical and high quality at the same time? Hmm – yeah you guessed it. Solid! It also just so happens that quilts that fall into the modern aesthetic happen to have a lot of solid in them. Even though this could evoke a sort of Amish feel to them, somehow it also appears modern.

 

Check out the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group. It would take you quite awhile to count all the beautiful “modern” quilts that have a majority of solids in them (there are more than 25,000 georgous quilts in the Flickr pool).

I am dedicating the month of July to Solids! Each week I plan to share inspiring photos and project links that use solid fabrics in some way. In fact, check out these cool books that feature solids in their quilt patterns:

Cherri House’s book City Quilts

Quilts Made Modern

And of course my most recent favorite:

Block Party the Modern Quilting Bee

Of course it helps that I’m having a Super Summer Solids Sale too!

Stick with me to the end of the month because there very well could be another GIVEAWAY that involves solid fabrics.

Happy Stitches,

Anna

>Bella Solid Precuts – Inspiration

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1. Book Cover, 2. Christa’s quilt: front, 3. DSCN1183, 4. Aqua HST’s — Off Center Diamond ., 5. 106_2616, 6. fair and square 2, 7. In the Window, 8. tiny ticker tape, 9. Figure 1.1, 10. New project, 11. snips, 12. spare change quilt, 13. building blocks14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

Lately, I’ve been very pepped up about the new solid precuts that Moda has released. I’ve seen more and more modern/contemporary quilts that use solids, which is sort of funny since the Amish only used solids anyway, but the look is distinctly modern and fun! I’m not exactly an expert on the history of this style, but I first noticed it when I got the book Material Obsession which was written by two awesome women in Australia. It seemed as though the quilters in Australia had chosen to use lots of white in the sashing to really make the colors of the printed fabrics they chose pop off the quilt. Of course, AmandaJean from Crazy Mom Quilts was also a big proponent of white sashing and a simple but sort of modern design of quilt. I was soooo excited when Moda announced back in April that they would start making precut charm squares (5″ squares), layer cakes (10″ squares) and even jelly rolls (2.5″ strips) in solid colors! The charms are absolutely PERFECT for making half square triangles, resulting in beautiful pinwheel quilts, or even for making a coin quilt. The Jelly Rolls just happen to be the PERFECT size for sashing (or at least the size I usually use) at 2 1/2″ strips. And that means LESS cutting and MORE time for SEWING and QUILTING! Yippee!! Thanks MODA!! But Moda even went a step beyond that, they put together some amazing combinations of their Bella Solids into those precut lines, I’m trying out the 1930s line which even though it seems specific to a time period, it’s not, if you look at it away from the time period context. To me, putting those beautiful saturated colors, they are all solid, against a white or even black background (by surrounding them with strips of those colors) will really make a rather modern statement. They also have a line of precuts that use the Marbles, which are an incredible array of marbley (is that a word?) colors. The specific one I purchased for the shop is called Citrus and I LOVE it, I can’t wait to put it together with one of our Bella Solid Black jelly rolls to make those Marbles just JUMP off the quilt! Just look at how this beautiful quilt came together with solid strips and some grey to set it off.

If you’d like some more inspiration, check out the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group, where I went to grab most of the pictures in the above mosaic.

So what do you think? Do you like the idea of modern quilts or do you prefer lots of prints? Spill the Beans!!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

P.S. Did you notice the new tab up at the top for Fun Project Links? You should check it out. It’s a place where I’m putting some links to ideas of what to do with different size cuts or colors of fabrics.