Gillman - Create Your Own Improv Quilts: Modern Quilting with No Rules & No Rulers

Publisher: Amy Marson

Creative Director: Gailen Runge

Editor: Lynn Koolish

Technical Editor: Linda Johnson

Cover/Book Designer: April Mostek

Production Coordinator: Zinnia Heinzmann

Production Editor: Alice Mace Nakanishi

Illustrator: Linda Johnson

Photo Assistant: Mai Yong Vang

Style photography by Lucy Glover and instructional photography by Diane Pedersen of C&T Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted

Published by C&T Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 1456, Lafayette, CA 94549

DEDICATION

To the North Jersey Modern Quilt Guild and especially to Aleeda Crawley, who cofounded this warm, friendly, diverse, inclusive guild with me in 2012. We encourage personal expression and diversity of size, shape, and purpose in our quilts, including art quilts for the wall. Machine piecing, hand piecing and/or quilting, and fusing all work for us. We love solids, but we also love combining them with contemporary or vintage fabrics, hand prints, and hand dyes. Perhaps we should call it postmodern.

This book reflects the vision we had for the NJMQG, which is still strong and growing five years later. Thank you, Aleeda.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, huge thanks and hugs to Lynn Koolish, my patient and good-humored editor. Your flexibility has made this book possible. Couldnt have done it without you. Really! And many thanks to everyone at C&T who worked with me to edit and design this beautiful book.

Im also grateful to the following companies:

Michael Miller Fabrics, which supplied me with many of the luscious Cotton Couture fabrics.

Hoffman Fabrics, whose Me and You collection of modern batiks added great accents.

P&B Textiles, whose Urban Scandinavian fabrics added pizzazz to my quilts.

Superior Threads, for the variegated King Tut and Bottom Line threads.

The Warm Company, Fairfield Industries, and Quilters Dream, which sent batting for my quilts.

FOREWORD

This has been a labor of both love and insanity. The love part was having an idea and doing the writing. The insanity was starting a book before I had a single quilt to show as an example.

Because I am so visual, it was impossible for me to write about the process without having first made the piece. This meant I had to experiment as I went along, discover what worked and what didnt, make a quilt, and then write. This took more time than I had anticipated, but it was an exciting voyage of many trials, errors, and successes.

Some of the what if? experiments worked, and you see them here. Many of them sparked new or alternate ideas I did not have time to follow up with; there are some pictures of those, still on the design wall. Still others will be cut up and made into new free-form modern quilts, and they may appear on my blog someday.

If writing this book has confirmed anything, it is that for me, visualizing how something should look when it is done is a recipe for failure. I can only work with freedom and creativity by experimenting, without trying to imagine to how it will look at the end. I highly recommend that you try this freeing approach: Leave yourself open to serendipity and your creativity will soar.

I encourage you to use this book as an idea generator, not as a recipe book. If you engage with the process, the result will take care of itself. Enjoy the love and the insanity on these pages, and let them be the sparks that get you started.

Affectionately,

Rayna

INTRODUCTION: A SMALL SLICE OF (MY QUILTING) HISTORY

One of the things that drew me to modern quilting was the term improvisational piecing. I have been working this way since the late 1990s, teaching hundreds of students to let go of their rulers and cut freehand.

Of course, when I learned to make a quilt in 1974, there were no rotary cutters, so we used rulers to trace the pattern pieces on the back of the fabric and cut them out withgasp!scissors. Edges cut with scissors arent necessarily perfectly even or straight, so the teacherwho came from a long line of scissor-wielding, quiltmaking ancestorssaid, Dont worry if the seams dont match. Fudge it and do the best you can. Since I had flunked seventh grade sewing, these words were music to my ears. And I discovered, in fact, that nobody but the Quilt Police noticed or cared whether the piecing was perfect.

Around 1996, I ditched the patterns and the ruler (except for trimming edges or cutting geometric shapes). Little did I know that the Whitney Museum Gees Bend exhibit in 2003 would usher in a new era of what I was already doing: wonky, improv, original work. And happily, improvisational piecing is part of the modern aestheticalong with some other terms that describe my philosophy.

No rules

No borders

Freedom in how to construct quilts

Personal expression

Since that is the way I have been working for two decades (Someone said to me recently, You were modern before there was modern.), I knew it was right up my alley in a lot of respects.

As the modern quilt movement has matured, I am seeing more and more quilts made from patterns, a reminder of the books from more than 40 years ago when I began to quilt. Modern quilt books and magazines, full of detailed instructions on yardage, cutting, and block placement have proliferated. This is a good thing for the thousands of new quilters who have discovered a new way to express themselves with an old art form.

But just as many of us have evolved from following patterns to making original quilts without a pattern, so I expect that many of you who use patterns to make your modern quilts are, or will soon be, tempted to break out and experiment.

This book offers you a way to make your own personality shine through in your modern quilts as you explore working without a pattern. As you work your way through this book, remember that everything you do can lead you in a direction that is truly your own!

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Everything old is new again, but with a twist. Solids and negative space reminiscent of Amish quilts still look fresh today with the use of white or gray backgrounds. Old-fashioned, traditional patterns emerge in larger scale; new settings; and bright, lively fabrics, which often come from one designers collection.

Whether you have been making traditional quilts and want to break out a bit, or have already jumped feetfirst into the modern movement, you can use this book as a starting point for making original quilts with a modern appeal.

You wont find patterns hereyoull find possibilities. Starting with simple shapes, youll see how to create modern quilts in your own individual style. Youll see ideas and examples you can use as inspiration for no-pattern, one-of-a-kind modern quilts. You select the colors and fabrics, you choose the scale of the units or blocks, and you make the changes you want to make as you work on your design wall.

While some consider modern quilts to be utilitarian, I believe the modern aesthetic works beautifully as art for the wall. So I encourage you to experiment with small pieces. When you work small, you have the opportunity to try different settings, fabrics, and designs without using a lot of fabric. And if you want to make a bed quilt, you will already have your smaller piece to serve as inspiration.