"Early Birds", a teaching quilt. Lap size 38 x 45"
I put my "Snow Melt" quilt aside to work on a sample quilt for a class I teach at my local quilt (and yarn) shop, JP Knit & Stitch. I had seen the Cloud 9 "YoYogi Park" fabrics designed by Heather Moore of Skinny la Minx in the shop and thought it would be fun to use them in the quilt. Genevieve, the shop owner, agreed.
I chose the grey and white "Peeking Birds" first, then the deep teal and light aqua fabrics from the same line. Genevieve wanted yellow in the quilt so I added the yellow from Carolyn Freidlander's "Doe" line from RobertKaufman.com. She picked the bright orange and white floral fabric ("Nobi" from Alexander Henry) for the back!
All of the fabrics on the front of the quilt meet the criteria for Low Volume Fabrics. (See my post from 3/19/2015). This quilt has a lot of negative space. I'd made a quilt using this design once before and that time chose two light solids in the negative space. It's an entirely different quilt using all low volume fabrics.
I like both quilts. Each has a unique character.
I usually try to put a solid in a quilt with a lot of print fabrics to give the eye a place to rest. Up close this quilt is busy. At a distance, the flying geese blocks read as solids while the pattern in negative space in the background seems much more dominant. That's really interesting.
I really enjoyed making this quilt. I had recently listened to Abby Glassenberg's great podcast with Heather Moore. Heather lives in Cape Town, South Africa. It's unlikely I'd ever meet her or go to her shop, but it was fun to hear Heather talk about designing fabrics. The Internet really can make Half-a-world-away feel like Right-next-door!
There are still a couple places in my class, Beyond Beginner Quilting, at JP Knit & Stitch if you'd like to join us! The class starts Saturday, May 2, 2015.