I bought a sewing machine when I was a grown up - I was dating my current husband, so sometime between 1998 and 2001. As I started reading knitting blogs, I discovered FunQuilts - there was a quilt a long of their book, Modern Quilt Workshop. See photos from the quilt a long here on Flickr. I got the book Modern Quilt Workshop for Christmas one year. Look through the quilt gallery on their web site. The one I've always wanted to figure out how to make is Ocean View (I don't think we're supposed to be able to get to that page. But look. It's gorgeous. Can you make it with prints? What happens if you use different colors? What is the ratio? I'm thinking 5x8 for each of the window panel halves, but who knows. )
I made Plain Spoken for the monkey. I really still want to make one of these in pinks and yellows or in Lilly Pulitzer colors - pink, green, turquoise, yellow. Palm Beach-y. It might be too much. I'm not sure.
The one I made for El was inspired by Between the Lines.
I follow Modern Quilt Studio on Facebook. I also read Weeks' blog, Craft Nectar - it is thoughtful and informative. I can only imagine that it is very genuine. So, I saw a post on Facebook offering a copy of Modern Quilts Illustrated for review. I snapped it up. It came in the mail today. It is very cool.
One of the great things about their patterns (spiffy red uniforms and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope) is the alternate palettes (or seeing what happens if you have more colors or less colors or if the shades are too close or to different). The alternate palettes and the clear instructions. The alternate palettes, clear instructions, and excellent illustrations. Really, there's a lot of great things about their patterns. One of the other things I like is that they make an excellent jumping off point if you, like me, have trouble reading and following directions. [one of the things that is fun to me is figuring out how to do stuff - so I usually only look at the pieces to cut, the assembly directions, and the alternate palettes. My husband is in charge of assembling stuff from stores.] But reading the words is always worthwhile with these guys.
For instance. The pattern for Beatrix is included - I was struck by how you could probably make that with a couple of sets of charm packs for the print blocks in the middle. The dimensions are pretty close. You'd have to do some math (or have a smaller quilt) to make it all work right. If you didn't want to slice the charm squares in half, you might be able to do the strips in a ticker tape scheme at the end. Or only have the stripes in one direction. I'm not really advocating this, this is just how I think about things. If the point of the magazine was to give me something to think about, it worked. When I first saw it, Beatrix reminded me of one from the Modern Quilt Workshop book, so I went back and looked it up. It's the Once Upon a Time quilt and, really, they're different from each other. They have blocks and lines, but that's probably where the similarity ends.
I really like the Stacks pattern. It is very graphic and reminds me of the Zipper quilt from the Modern Quilt Workshop. Just because of how your eye zig-zags down the quilt - not because they really look alike. It looks totally makeable. I end up with a lot of fabric in one or two color families (pink and turquoise) - and I think this might really suit my stash.
The palette study in the closing was fascinating, and will probably be what pulls me to subscribe. The advice on how to do a minkee or fleece back will probably be used one day. The tidbits on the first pages were fun.
It is a neat magazine - Thanks for the opportunity to review it - and good luck with the endeavor!
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