April 13, 2014

Sew Solid Sunday with Esch House Quilts

Linking up today with Debbie of Esch House Quilts who has a regular monthly series going called Sew Solid Sunday featuring projects made from all solids.

As I was cutting strips today for a small quilt, I realized one of the fabrics was the same stripe I had used for the binding on Fitting In and since I don't have any new solid projects at the moment I thought I'd share an older one.

Fitting In was one of the first all solid quilts I made and came about as part of the Tetris Quilt Along by Melissa of Happy Quilting. It was the first, and so far only, quilt-a-long I've done.



Working on this quilt, the biggest challenge for me was the fact that there wasn't a plan. I'm not an improv kind of quilter. This wonderful little quilt came together week after week as Melissa gave us a set of shapes to play the Tetris game. I made myself stick to the "rules" of the game by building from the bottom up and simply allowing the design to emerge each week. It wasn't easy.



At first I felt compelled to try and fill all the spaces like you're supposed in the real game but am so glad I didn't. The white squares represent places where the game pieces didn't fit together right and yet they became a vital part of the final quilt. The design needed those empty spaces to create more visual interest and play. You can see how it all came together week by week by looking under the Tetris Quilt Along tag on the sidebar if you're interested in the weekly progress.



I chose a controlled palette of colors rather than the normal primary Tetris colors. In the end I loved how the quilt took shape each week. In many ways it's probably one of the more modern designs I've made. There is a randomness to it that I find quite pleasing.

One of the things about working with all solids that I find intimidating is that the solid fabric just begs to show off wonderful quilting and that is the part I am least comfortable with. For this one I simply did straight lines in a grid to reinforce the grid structure of the quilt. Nothing fancy but I think it's ok. Just ok. More lines would have been better but I needed something quick to get it finished on time.

I have 2 all solid projects in the wings that need to be done by the end of the month for challenge groups I'm in so hopefully next month I'll have a new finish to share on Sew Solid Sunday.

There are so many beautiful all solid quilts being made that it can be quite enticing to jump in and play with pure color and form. No distraction from prints and patterns. Yet I find that after I've made something using all solids, I'm usually quite ready to busy things up with some prints.  : )

How about you? Do you like working with all solids? If you'd like to see some inspiration check out Sew Solid Sunday links and my Pinterest board specifically for quilts from solids.

Follow on Bloglovin

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for linking up to Sew Solid Sunday, Anne! I love the color palette you chose and totally get the difficulty of letting the quilt develop more organically :) Looking forward to next month!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Random is not my favorite way to operate (even though I may create a look of random, it will usualy be planned). Yours turned out well. I like the squares that creep into the border.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love how tihis turned out, Anne.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a very cool quilt, Anne! I'm glad you shared it with us!

    ReplyDelete
  5. it turned out great! who would think that you didn't have a plan?!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love the blue and green color combination it looks so fresh and feels like spring. The random setting of the blocks is wonderful. Isn´t it great to try something new and then have a great result. I like the random setting a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love this. I am a child of the late 80s early 90s, and a total Tetris addict. Maybe some day when I have more time...

    ReplyDelete
  8. You know my quilt software works in all solids, so when I design a quilt I "see" it that way and not necessarily in prints. So it's always a challenge to move from the solids on the computer screen to prints. I do like solids, but am always ready for a heady mix of Kaffe prints to really make me excited.

    Your Tetris is great! I love how you "cheated" and broke the frame--that's the designer in you coming out.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is such a wonderful quilt. Solids are my favorites and I love that you have extra pieces in the border.

    ReplyDelete

WaHoo!!! You're leaving me a comment. Thanks for stopping by and do come back again. Quilt on, Anne.