BE THE GOOD
Our team was an individual member team compiled of 5 women from around the globe. Australian, Canadian, Chilean, and American women chose to come together to create a quilt for charity to be display at QuiltCon 2020.
We began our process by introducing ourselves over email. Explaining our favorite quilting techniques and where we were from. It was interesting at first since we are all on different time zones. Thinking back actually I don’t think any of us are on the same time zone.
Our team included myself, Angelina Payton from Texas, Jenny Armour from Austraila, Carolina Oneto Tapia a Chilean from Sao Paulo, Paula Pike from Washington, Michelle Ramsay from Kentucky, and Velda Roy from Canada.
Ideas began flowing pretty quickly which should be expected from a group of like minded quilters and creatives. We started with our group name “Peace Around the World” since we were from all over. You could tell in our emails how excited we were to begin and start creating.
Velda created the first design and we all instantly loved it. It really kept the focus on us all being from around the world and was something we could easily all believe in.”BE THE GOOD”
From this design I took it into illustrator and began to play with fonts. I then went back to the resources the Modern Quilt Guildprovided of different quilted font blocks. I was really inspired by all the amazing text block patterns already designed.
I drew my first bolt of inspiration from a “CAUTION” sign at work. The font was in yellow with a black block around it. It really made the word “CAUTION” stick out. It gave the word more emphasis and impact. This took my mind in a typography direction.
I then decided I really didn’t want to use any appliqué if I could help it. I thought it would be so cool to have all the font sewn into the quilt. We used Typecast by Whole Circle Studio for “BE,THE, GOOD” EPP letters. Jenny completed these. Jenny said the pattern “was good for the letters with curves” and “I made sure every part of every letter was cut on the same grain”. Jenny worked directly with the pattern designer and had this to say, ” we had an interesting and friendly correspondence and I am enjoying her newsletters.”
We used Just my Type Lowercase by Quiet Play for the type writer style foundation paper pieced font blocks. Michelle completed the grey font in the black boxes. She said, “I enjoyed working with those little letters. She also added, ” they were more time consuming than I thought but the effort was worth it.”
The “WORLD” block was so fun to design and create. I used the font “Braggadocio” in illustrator and just loved it so much I decided surely we can create a pattern for it. So thats what I did. I blew up the font on my copier at work to the size I needed. Then took Paper Solvy and traced all of the letters. I was about to foundation paper piece the W and L. For the letters O, R, and D I created curved templates and used curved piecing to construct those blocks. I had never done either of those techniques before so I was pleasantly surprised when they worked.
I was inspired by the Carolina’s modern mosaic work for the border. I was just playing with simple shapes in illustrator when I thought I should just create one small block and try rotating each one. I did just that in illustrator and thought wow who would have thought one simple block would create so much movement. Carolina and Velda created all of these blocks. Velda thankfully even caught a mistake in my measuring.
The long-arm quilting took me longer to design. I normally don’t begin designing until I have the quilt loaded on the quilter, but this time was different. All of these women had worked so hard on there portions I did not want to just wing it. LOL
I drew over my design multiple times and finally decided I was going to stick with my typography idea from the beginning. I used matchstick quilting in the boarder and in some of the letters. I add a 3D outline to the “BE, THE, GOOD” blocks since it was our focus. I then decided I wanted more movement in the background, so I added feathers. Quilting this one was special for me. Im still in the early stages of my long-arm quilting career but this quilt definitely helped me expand my skill set.
To be honest this was a dream quilt of mine that I never knew I needed to create. Black, white and grey are my favorite colors which you can easily see by my closet. I enjoy leading, I have improved in delegating, and I so deeply enjoy design and creating. It was just a pleasure to work along side these ladies to create such a beautiful quilt.
