Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Thanks to all for the kind words commenting on our “thread tales” here. Sometimes I think I’m talking to myself, but now it seems perhaps there are a bunch of good listeners out there.

Paula commented that she feels drawn to “modern” quilting. I think I am too, but I’m going to guess that we may have different notions of what modern quilting is. From all the traveling to quilt blogs that I do, I’d say there isn’t a standard definition but perhaps just a few common threads (pun intended). Here are the threads I associate with making a quilt modern: lots of white space, bright colors, light gray used as background, solid fabrics used often, improvisational piecing often, but traditional blocks are very common as well. I’m also often surprised by how many of the younger modern quilters are using templates for their innovative blocks. Remember those, veteran quilters! I try hard to avoid them myself.

Here are some links to blogs typifying what I think of as modern quilting; your mental picture of a modern quilt my be radically different. If so, please do tell.

These are links to some of the folks frequently mentioned in magazine and e-zine pieces about the modern quilt movement.

fat quarterly

generation Q

bumblebeans

oh fransson

quilt dad

How about a comment or two from you? What comes to your mind in talking about “modern” quilting?