I think I might have made a modern quilt

I have long been an admirer of really modern, clean, minimalist quilts. Coming from the school of more is more, cram as many different fabrics in as you can to a quilt, it has been quite the challenge to make one.

However, friends have just had their first baby and I kind of regard them and their penthouse flat as modern and minimalist and wanted to try and make a baby quilt that fitted the scheme.


For the first time ever, I sketched a rough design.

The design was scary for me as there wasn't much of it.
I think minimalist takes courage - there still has to be a balance between all the components for it to look right.
There is definitely an art to it.
My usual quilts are definitely not minimalist.
I wondered if I could pull it off.

There was loads of negative space. My previous inclination would have to been to do an all over cross-hatch design or some mindless meandering.

Not this time. I used it as an opportunity to try out lots of different quilting patterns.

I'm not sure there is necessarily a coherence to my willy-nilly approach to switching from one pattern to the next but I still think it kind of works.

This is a view of the back - I partly used Essex Linen

The back gives you a better idea of the randomness of the quilting.

The daddy is a pilot and the mummy used to be a flight attendant, so I though the addition of this piece of fabric was apt.

Most of the fabric in the front of the quilt is an Egyptian cotton bundle from Empress Mills. I have no idea how much is in a bundle but they are just £4.50 a bundle and I didn't use all of it in this quilt - there are still some bits left over. It is a brilliant, clean white (not sure it comes across in the photos) and it is like quilting through butter. I shall definitely be getting some more.

I'm still debating whether to quilt in the dark columns or leave as is.

But for the moment I am just going to enjoy the fact that I think I might just have made a modern quilt.