Mid October Already!!!

Say it isn't so . . . mid October and I haven't posted once this month. Time just seems to slip away like the leaves are slipping from the trees and the warm temps are fading. My last post was for the Around the World Blog Hop. If you'd like to learn a little more about me and my process check it out. My daughter also posted for the same hop and she'd love to have you take a look and even start following her as she begins to build her blog, Emily Claire Studio.

Today I thought I'd post about a wall hanging/table runner I made awhile back that's in the fall issue of Stitch Magazine. The theme was contrast and you can't get higher contrast than pure black and white. The idea had been floating around in my sketchbook and this particular theme seemed like the perfect excuse to make it up and submit the concept. Thankfully the nice people at Stitch agreed.

I have a real passion for colorful large scale prints. Fabrics by Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler being at the top of the list. But some of my designs are much better suited for solids. Point/Counterpoint was one such project. I considered several color combinations and even prints as I played around with the early designs, but in the end I chose pure black and white because I wanted to make a very bold graphic statement.

While a good deal of my work is based on blocks and I have lots of fun exploring all the possibilities with blocks, the other side of my design process explores things like line, shape, scale and contrast. Studies in abstract composition lie at the heart of these explorations and they often work best in solids.

My biggest challenge when working with solids is the machine quilting. You may know that the quilting part is not what I enjoy and solids really beg to be quilted well. Deciding how to quilt an all solid quilt can be a struggle. All that space available to create great texture. I thought about pebbles to contrast with the lines but in the end simple straight lines seemed to be all that was needed. More lines might have been nice but then again minimal is minimal right?

The design produced a lot of leftover half square triangle pieces so I put them to use in a small pillow as part of the final submission. There are so many great arrangements you can make with HSTs that I do think you could play with them for a year and never exhaust the possibilites. Especially when fabric options are thrown into the mix. Here's what I included with my submission. Which one is your favorite?

I'm linking this solids post up with Sew Solid Sunday at Esch House Quilts. Hop over to see Debbie's latest all solid design and get a little inspiration.