Intentional Design Misprint

I can't believe we're half way through the year and I've finished 18 quilts so far! Seven minis, two quilts from patterns, two secret sew projects and seven original designs throw size quilts including my latest finish my Misprint quilt.

Misprint Quilt

I began designing this quilt last year for the APQ nine patch challenge for Quiltcon, obviously I missed the point of the challenge even though each dot and it's shadow is a nine patch.  My original inspiration were the light bulbs used in old signage and was black and white with an accent color for the dots which were centered on the quilt.

Inspiration

The first version of the design was a bit, well, boring so I started to play around with it and added the ombre´ and took away a few of the dots to create a border.  This was much better but I knew it could be improved upon.  Then I moved all the dots off the background to add some stripes, EUREKA!  My light bulbs all the sudden fell into place, or should I say out of place, and it reminded me of a misprint or bad coin strike.

Coin Strike Error

As soon as I had settled on the "misprint" design I knew in order to successfully to execute this design I would have to match my binding.  It just wouldn't do to have the dots cut off by a boundary line.  Because of the matching binding and all the curved piecing I set aside the project and moved on but left it on the list of quilts to make.  This was a mistake on my part.  About month ago I started to see shadowed dot prints showing up on pillows at West Elm and Target and on notebook covers.  That's when I knew I had to make this quilt before similar designs were everywhere!.  The crazy thing is this quilt took me less than 2 weeks to make.  The piecing didn't take long at all.  I used Jen Carlton-Bailey's 4" curve piecing template and chain pieced the blocks.  The binding wasn't anything too trying once I had a game plan for switching colors.

Misprint binding

The design demanded simple quilting to not distract from the visual impact of the high contrast color palette which left me the opportunity to try out a new quilting pattern in the negative space.

Misprint Quilting

I found the perfect back for this quilt, Literary Read Aloud in Gusto by Heather Givans.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the text was taken from the Anne of Green Gables book series.  Growing up I related to Anne quite a bit, minus the 4-5 marriage proposals.

Misprint Backing

As you can see the text is "misprinted" on the fabric, too great!  By the way, photographing this quilt was extremely difficult because the design has an imaginary light source I had to somehow match that to a real light source, not doing so made the design look flat and a little chaotic.

Finally, some big news, big to me at least.  My city planner quilt, another 3-D block, was accepted for showing in the Tactile Architecture exhibit at this year's International Quilt Market/Festival in Houston!!

City Planner Quilt

This is the first time I've had a quilt juried into a non-modern quilt show/exhibit.  I'm really excited and completely blown away.  In a week or so I'll find out if the two quilts I entered into the MQG Modern Showcase at the same show get accepted, fingers crossed.