Something Rather Modern

The quilt on the cover of the fall 2013 issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited was the source of my latest finish. The quilt's designer is Jen Eskridge and she created an interesting pattern that was fun and rather different than anything I've made to date.

I gathered up a collection of fabrics that all fell into the same group of colors: brown, gray, black, white, and off white. I made a bunch of circles. Some circles were sewn inside bigger circles, others were scattered to overlap. While I followed the layout above in general, mine comes out looking slightly different. There is less space between the circles, and I think I wound up with more circles than in the original. Still, this was a great, easy-to-follow pattern.

I finished this top almost a year ago and was immediately intimidated by all of the white space I needed to quilt. I wanted to do something creative in the background, but instead I settled on quilting a variety of motifs in the circles themselves and doing a plain meander in the background. I'm not disappointed. When the light hits it just right, there's such texture!

Here is a shot of it while in the middle of quilting the background:

And here a couple of close-ups of the circles. Hopefully you can see some of the different ways I quilted the circles.

Here's a shot of the back of the quilt:

I kind of like looking at the back, even though some of my quilting isn't as smooth as I'd like.

This is going to a former co-worker as her "good-bye" present. She has waited very patiently for it. We're having lunch soon so I can give it to her.