The last of this round of secret projects was revealed last week!! “Altitudinal Ecosystem” was August Quilt of the Month for the Modern Quilt Guild. Amazing to think that thousands of people got my quilt in their email last week. WOW!! In case you missed it, the pattern is available to MQG members here.
This design was created as part of Quilt Design a Day (QDAD). It was inspired by Anne @ Play Crafts spark (inspirational photo and color palette) of Crater Lake.
The mountain in the middle of the lake reminded me of my ecology studies. We looked at the impacts of altitude on species causing zonation/changes of various species (both plant and animal).
This gave me the idea to represent the zones by various colored bars and graduating the color from light green to dark green to white (snow caps).
For the back, I really wanted to use this mountain print from Sarah Watson’s Indian Summer line and some of the off cuts from the front. However, the off-cuts were too bold for the print so instead I created a grey and white stripe section with splashes of the color from the front.
You may also notice in this photo above I have used color blocked the binding. That is, The mountain areas is in dark green (pickle), the lake in the dark blue and the sky area in Lighter blue.
The quilting was all done with my walking foot and various Aurifil threads. I used standard straight lines following the direction of the zones, for the mountain. This represented the solid nature of the mountain. The sky and the lake though I wanted to introduce more movement. For the sky, I used wavy lines representing air movement.
The lake, I was thinking about circles but since it it not symmetrical I thought an improv. irregular block design could work. This quilting design was inspired by some of the quilting Carolyn Friedlander uses in her savor each stitch quilts. I really like the look and the texture is fantastic.
This is definitely one of my favorite quilts, I have made so far, its getting a little hard to choose now :-). I hope you all enjoy it too.
Details
Name: Altitudinal Ecosystem
Design: Designed by me, available from the MQG site (if you are a member)
Fabric: Kona Solids (White, Shadow, Pickle (which was provided by Robert Kaufman), Wasabi, Prussian, Oasis); Back: Woodland in Pine, Indian Summer, Sarah Watson, AGF, Kona Solids (White, Shadow, Pickle, Oasis, Prussian)
Dimensions: 60″ x 60″
Quilted: Using walking foot and matching Aurifil 50wt threads; Ultra wavy lines, Improv. Irregular block shapes, Straight line quilting.
If you want to submit a quilt design for the MQG Quilt of the month, you can – they are looking for 2016 people. Vist this page for the information and submission form.
