Northeast Louisiana Modern Quilt Guild

It's official:  Ramona Putnam is putting herself out there and is getting  The Northeast Louisiana Modern Quilt Guild formed....one step at a time.  Here is the NELA MQG webpage and the Facebook link where you can go and click on LIKE.  These pages will fill up soon.   You'll be seeing flyers about NELA Modern Quilt Guild in the local quilt shops and all around town.  Pick one up and see what modern is all about.  Join in....let's grow modern together.  Our first  meeting is scheduled for Saturday, October 20, 2012, 2 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, West Monroe.  We look forward to seeing you there. 

It may take a while for some to begin to think modern when used in the same sentence with quilting.  It's a movement that is quietly, quickly, growing.  

The HuMAn of the house is getting with the program!  Here was the dialog last night when I displayed this quilt top I finished before the dinner bell rang.  He wanted to know why the right side of the quilt didn't match the left side of the quilt. There are more frogs over there than here!  He says!

I patiently explained that I only had six frog blocks and that in modern, one doesn't have to make a symmetrical quilt.  But, he said, the right side has lots of blank space.....do you really want that?   To which I answered,  yes, I did want that space to remain open (I had nothing more to put there!), you see, that too is one of the natures of modern.  Modern can be very busy....just in traditional quilting, but it can also be free of busy-ness.  Could that be called negative space?   Lots of modern quilts are made by simply using many different solid fabrics such as those Kona solids we are seeing on the fabric store shelves.  His eyes are glazing over at this point, but he did have another thought: 

But, he said the fabric isn't all the same color!  Okay, I continue....in modern, there isn't the strict rules of color and design that we have in our traditional quilting groups.  That's why I had the freedom to use Dianne's flamboyant stripes next to the very quiet paisley set on the palest aqua background. 

Okay, he queries:  Do you like it?  To which I gave a resounding, YES.  He then added, well, I do to!
He is such the husband dear. 

This quilt (now named....A modern take on garage sale finds)  was quite the challenge and there is always a story:  A friend found these orphan quilt blocks in a garage sale....grouped with many other blocks.  Since she bought the bag, she of course, got first dibs, then allowed her friends to grab the remaining blocks.  My hands got there first, so I took the frog and string blocks and passed the remaining on to others...since I'm not the least bit greedy!

Another friend had been donated boxes of fabric several weeks ago and after she filtered through the boxes, she too passed the remaining fabric on to the rest of us.  I grabbed the green linen....a lot of green linen which I have been using in quilts.  So, for this challenge, it just seemed the natural thing to do to put the linen, the frogs and the string blocks together.  I used the paisley from my stash to make the quilt larger.   Oh, the Dianne Springer Timeless Treasures red.blue.green.white.purple.orange.pink fabric was just thrown in for grins!

Here's what's left that will be pieced together for the back.   What will he think now?   Keeping up with modern, now that's a good thing!   It's okay to be traditional...it's okay to be modern.  Double the pleasure, double the fun.  Learn more about the modern movement here at The Modern Quilt Guild blog.