More dare-to-be-square quilts

While we’re having a look at the wide world of quilts built simply on squares, it’s a wonderful time to consider whether the piecing lines are blurred or not.  If you pick high contrast fabrics to put next to each other you get very pronounced patterns (diagonals in the quilt above) and if the fabrics are close in color or value, the distinctions between squares (or seam allowances) get lost.  And of course if you’re aiming for the one (high contrast for instance) and produce a wash instead it may not be what you meant to do, but it might be beautiful nonetheless.

So we’re going to define watercolor quilts as being in the postage stamp style, but with graded or blurred lines so that the colors all blend artfully together.  (actually the picture at the end of the last post, with rainbow colors, is sort of more a watercolor quilt but we’ll ignore that for now).  Watercolor quilts were big in the ’90’s and tended to be used as backdrops for applique.  But if you love graded color runs these are really fun to play with — especially now with the range of big scale contemporary prints that weren’t available a few decades ago.

Here’s one to look at:

beautiful little watercolor quilt — constructed from squares

Here’s one in larger squares — probably 5″ charm squares — and beautifully arranged in the spectrum, but still uses contrast effectively (so not quite a watercolor but pretty nonetheless):

rainbow charm square quilt — so pretty!

Pixel quilts depend on the sharp contrast between squares to complete the pattern.  Pixel by the way is short for ‘picture element’ which is kind of way of saying the smallest picture element, or atom.  Here’s a cute little pixel quilt, with a favorite character from a sci-fi cartoon:

“Gir” robot pixel quilt by lyric889 on Etsy

See?  We haven’t even left the Squaresville station yet, and there’s still tons more quilts to look at.  If you get good at cutting and sewing squares there is a world of patchwork that opens up to you, even if you never venture in log-land.  Or triangular village.

In the next post I’ll cover a few more square-style quilts, and even post a free pattern for a table topper.  Happy piecing and quilting!  Stay square!