New Black and White Quilt

The Beginning
This is the beginning of a quilt top. So far, it's approximately 22" x 40". It's been hanging out in my bedroom for many months. It's been there so long, I cannot remember when I made it but I'm pretty sure it was after the 2008 Vermont Quilt Festival, last June. I know that because all the fabrics are leftovers from the Shades of Black and White quilt that I entered into the 2008 Vermont Quilt Festival.

Design Idea
The design was inspired by the "Jewel Squares Blind" in Kaffe Fassett's book, Glorious Patchwork. Catch a peak of the design on the book cover here. While it's not a precise copy, it took a lot of restraint to not break into something more spontaneous. It's grown on me and now I like it enough that I'm afraid of ruining it. That's one excuse (among many) for leaving it unfinished for so long. Still, I want to add something to make it more my own design -- and bigger. I'd like it to be at least lap quilt size but I'm also thinking of something bigger. This will be an organic process.

Inspiration
This weekend, I sat down at my sewing machine and made dozens of very rough logcabin blocks. This is the form of machine piecing that comes to me most naturally. I stopped part way through that process so that many of the blocks are "incomplete." Next, I placed the "Jewel Square" piece on the floor and framed it with large pieces of cloth. You could say I was trying out ideas for borders except that what I was doing was inspired by the recent Radka Donnell exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum.

Radka often works with large pieces of fabric -- both yardage and clothing scraps. In recent years, she created the Paradise Dozen, a series of quilts that explore the logcabin block. I was thinking about what she said about all the demands on women's time and decided that since my time is not in such demand, I should be making better use of it. That's what got me back at my sewing machine. I'm not trying to create a "Radka look alike" just using her spirit of exploration to access my own inner muse.

Cobblestones
I put the partial blocks close together to create something that reminds me of cobblestones. It was nice except the "Square Jewels" section was getting lost in the clutter. Clearly, this cobblestone idea is something I could further explore on its own but I want to complete this unfinished quilt so I set that idea aside for now.

Stay tuned . . .