Modern Quilting

This seems to be the "new" topic of contention in the quilt world.  How comfortable it makes me feel.  Warm and cozy.  Oh, perhaps that's my fever?

I was ALWAYS the renegade outsider at my quilt chapter meetings.  My fabric choices were always "too bright" (those colors hurt my eyes), my pieced blocks sometimes had no pattern, I used "glue".  The horror went deep and I know they talked behind my back.  I stopped having any "show and tell" so I wouldn't have to watch them cringe.

I did shop at a country quilt store which specialized in the Civil War with a bit of 1930's Depression (here in Maine, I didn't have many choices). I used those fabrics and needle turn hand appliqué to make something they had never seen before.  Scandalous. Why ever would you stitch such pretty things on a taupe polka dot background?  Because.

Needless to say, I stopped attending Quilt meetings.  But that was AFTER I got myself elected President and seriously messed them up by being Program Chair for the two years preceding my election.  See, there were newbies in the group and they took to me like bees to honey.  We glued.  We used WW.  We didn't hand quilt.  We covered things with a layer of tulle.  Added beads.  In other words, we made crap.  But we had FUN.

I had an art education which kept me for straying too far into the world of Fabric Crap Making. At best, I knew it was bad when I saw it.  Others weren't so lucky.  They even won Blue Ribbons in the State Quilt Show which is something that a quilter can never get past.  Or being published.  But that was all in the name of "Art Quilting".

This new attack is on traditional pieced quilting.  Modern Quilting.  Not for "old ladies".  Sweeties, yes, you gals in your thirties, who know everything about nothing.  I may be 64, but I can out Modern Quilting you any day of the week.  And so can all the 50, 60 and 70 year olds out here who have Modern Quilted all along.  Amy Butler didn't come up with this on her own, you know.  Women piecing scraps by the light from the fire were making Modern Quilts.  But I don't think their toddlers were destroying the thread racks while mom shopped.

Any Modern Quilters out there who can manage to make friends with a Traditional Quilter will have all the help you will ever need to make your patterns and your quilts.  Even, at my worst, these traditional quilters would help me, teach me, show me, love me (well, some of them didn't ever come to even like me) and in return I would come when they called to thread their sewing machines, calibrate their bobbins, straighten their seams, and just sit and sew with them.  And when they looked at what I was making (isn't that interesting) they mostly checked to see if the technique was correct and left the fabric choices and design to me.  Of course, my Rooster in Drag was well loved by all.  And quite "Modern".