I take photos for inspiration almost everywhere. Squares placed in a grid are the basis for lots of quilts I’ve made.
When I saw Josef Albers painting of a square in squares at the modern wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC I was mesmerized. This painting was so simply brilliant! Josef Albers created many square in a square paintings as color studies.
Josef Albers painting at the modern wing of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC
A few years after I took this photo I bought yardage of yellow and toned Cherrywood hand-dyes and remembered seeing that painting ... I was lucky to find that photo in my hard drive! I used 4 yards of Cherrywood hand-dyes – I really had to do some careful cutting to make sure I had enough fabric for the outermost square. For the inner squares, after cutting the correct width, fabric strips were sewn on, pressed, then rotary cut perfectly square.
Making a decision on how to quilt Yellow Square was easy – this is a contemporary piece and called for contemporary quilting. No feathers. Nothing fancy. Just straight line quilting. To make sure my stitching lines stayed straight registration lines were marked one inch apart across the quilt top.
I used four silk threads and two Aurifil 50 weight cottons. Before I started stitching I wasn’t sure how I would distribute the colors across the top but once I got started the choice was easy – I didn’t want to stop and change threads so starting at the first edge I used color #1 across the entire quilt, rolling as I went. At the other end, I started with color #2 and using a ruler stitched a half inch line, rolling back as I went.
Exciting when I got down to the last few lines of stitching! The quilting adds texture and the thread blends in with all four fabrics used. At this point I am absolutely loving the texture!
The saffron, gold, and taupe threads blended beautifully across all the colors in the quilt.
Blocking to remove distortion and let the fabric shrink before binding.
This project was only the second finished on my Bernina Q24 and I am loving this machine.
