A Modern Experiment

It has been quite a while since my last post, due to helping a relative move (exhausting!), and the quilting of this quilt (frustrating!).

At the moment, it has the very unimaginative title of "Modern Square", as the title eludes me just as the quilting design did.

This quilt started out as a block assignment from our small Modern Quilt Group.  

It is from a book of 'modern blocks' (sorry, don't remember the exact name as I don't own the book), and each of us was to make one 12 inch block, keeping in the modern style. 

So that's great, but now what do I do with it?  I'm not one to let UFO's sit around for years (okay, I have one), so I decided to repeat the block design by scaling it up.  
Final measurements:  42" x 42", big enough for a baby quilt or a wall hanging.  Well, hubby liked it so much, he wanted it as a wall hanging.

Now the even more frustrating part.  How to quilt it.  
Originally, I had this planned

but set the quilt aside to work on some other projects.  Three weeks later, I'm back to this one.  And I don't like what I've planned! 

So, over the next three days, I spend 2-3 hours each day, drawing, erasing, and drawing, and erasing. 

Arrggh!  I was getting nowhere!  Then finally, I decided to go simple

and then I feel I'm getting somewhere.  Once I rid myself of the pressure to quilt it in the 'modern' style, with pebbles, swirls, or anything to fill up the negative space, the piecing was able to become the main focus again.

The above design was tweaked a bit more, and ultimately, not a single pebble appeared.

I do want to thank Angela Walters for her Dot to Dot quilting class for the diamond design in the squares.

So, if you find yourself stumped on a quilting design, try going simple, and maybe working up from there.  Remember, there are no quilt police!

And next time, how to quilt those straight lines.  (See the tutorial here)

Happy Quilting