ZigZag Path, Part II

I’m repeating part of my very first post ever, since, over the last two and a half years,  I have learned so much more about what I want to include here, and that first post was quite sparse.

ZigZag Path

ZigZag Path, 1997            59″ x 59″                   Photography by Sibila Savage

This quilt is the end product of the Prints, Plaids, Stripes, and Solids class I took from Gerald Roy at a local fabric store in September of 1997.   Working in this class was absolutely wonderful, opening up many, many new ways of working with interesting fabrics.  I had previously taken an extensive color theory class with Jerry, and this class was the logical progression in our education.  Again, I can’t say enough good things about the great teachers with whom I have had the pleasure of studying.

As one of the exercises in this class, we were challenged to find blocks that might be enhanced by the introduction of plaids and stripes. So I set off poring through my quilting bible, Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, looking at all these blocks with new eyes, imagining how stripes might change the simple designs.  I finally  found The One–Brackman’s #2585, Quartered Square.  As I look at this now, it doesn’t even look like the same block, since the fabric, fabric placement, and the block arrangement all changed the look of the individual blocks so much, creating a lot of activity.

I started out by trying to match the stripes as they went from one block to the next, and quickly gave up on that idea.  The stripes and plaids would just have to fall wherever, because they were too hard to corral.  As this quilt took shape, I felt it needed some grounding, so I added the two vertical “columns” of solids, which gives a sense of focus.

The triple borders were used to hold all this activity in place.  And here’s the detail.

ZigZag Path, detail

This quilt was accepted by the jury into the 14th Annual American Quilter’s Society Quilt Show, Paducah, Kentucky, 1998.  Having been seen there, it caught the attention of the publishers of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, and was featured in their September 1999 issue, number 315, pages 64-65 and later in their All About Quilting from A to Z book.

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