My take on a "Modern Quilt"

I have become intrigued by the "Modern Quilts" that have become popular over the past few years, in particular the debate that has taken place between those for and those against.   I stand on the fence as I have never liked to think of myself in any particular box; I'd rather do what I want to do whether it's a complicated quilt (not many of those these days!), a simple quilt, a piece of embroidery, a piece of felt, or a combination of any of these - and more besides!

I do love the simplicity of these newer quilts and with that in mind, as well as my "Seen From Above" theme, I designed a quilt which uses the plan of our house.   It was definitely useful having an in-house draughtsman who could come up with an accurate drawing, although I did made a few changes to simplify the design.

The background for this quilted hanging was created slowly over the summer and was based on the ideas of Valerie S Goodwin from her excellent "Art Quilt Maps".   She first creates an opaque layer by sewing irregular shapes of fabric to a background using the stitch and flip method and then hand stitching any raw edges which gives the background some texture.   She then goes on to add paint and a translucent layer but I didn't feel brave enough on this piece to go any further so I just left it with the random shapes background.

To this I bonded the shapes from the plan of our house which were cut from some red fabric I had dyed myself.   The quilt was then machine quilted in vertical straight lines using a variegate cream for cream areas and a variegated red over the red shapes.   I also added red quilt lines horizontally over the red shapes.

I used the faux piping method to bind the quilt, using the same red fabric for the contrasting piping.
I finished by machining the title on the side using the red thread.

    

Having had this quilt in my head for so long I am pleased that it has turned out just how I imagined it!