You Have To Start Somewhere - My Early Quilts #5



When I pulled out all of my early quilts to photograph for this series, I remember making a coordinating set of wall quilts; but had forgotten what they looked like.  Back in 1999, I was working on my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and was lucky enough to have a Professor who was interested in Fiber Arts.  I developed an Independent Study project under her guidance...the topic - Quilting.

I actually got 3 units of college credit for Quilting - How awesome is that!

Aside from doing lots of research, and writing a paper, the culmination of my project was three quilts.  The first two coordinated and are featured here.  The third will be featured sometime next week.

While I cannot remember EXACTLY what my platform/story was, I was attempting to show how color and print can be transformative.

This was my attempt at Traditional, using the ever popular Friendship Star block.



And this second quilt using the exact same pattern was my attempt at transforming the Traditional into something more Updated.


You realize I didn't say Modern...that's because this was 1999, the term "modern" as we know it today, did not exist (or at least I didn't know about it)...yet even back then I was leaning towards a more modern aesthetic.

Side note:  I can remember being thrilled to have found that text fabric; which was just the word Moo...Moo...Moo repeated over and over again.  And what about those rainbow solids, you gotta love them, right?  Haha.

Even as wall quilts, these two examples are quite terrible as there isn't a stitch of quilting on them.  I was still ignorant as to how to hold the layers together.  These are only tacked with small stitches in four places, and the front still wraps around the back as a "binding"...which was my M.O. for all of my early quilts.

Yet, aesthetically, these quilts and particularly the latter give a pretty big glimpse into what my future would hold.  Who would have thought that 11 years after I made these quilts, I would have committed myself to an aesthetic that I was unknowingly already a part of.



**This post belongs to a small series I've created to share some of the first quilts that I made, not only for documentation purposes; but to show that we all have to start somewhere**

Early Quilt #5 (You are here)