Rainbow Remix {Modern Rainbow}

This week, I’m showing the quilt Rainbow Remix from my book Modern Rainbow. Rainbow Remix also hung at QuiltCon a few weeks ago.

Rainbow Remix really challenged me to move outside of my comfort square. I really admire the quilters of Gee’s Bend and I wanted to emulate their free flowing improv style.

In all, it was fun and  playing with the arrangement of color and then trying to fit the arrangement into the quilt. Because the blocks are irregular the finished quilt looks a bit different than the rough draft layout on my design surface. My goal was to keep the general movement of color consistent but to be surprised by the specific color alignment of the finished quilt top.

Here’s behind the scenes photo of the quilt on my design surface, er floor I mean. 🙂 It looks like the left part of the quilt top is assembled already.

While, I played with irregularity in both the composition of and in the construction of the quilt it was interesting to me to see how I can manipulate the “rules” of classical piecing and free form of improvisational piecing to create a truly unique quilt. In my book I offer what I call the “wonk o’meter”, which talks about the tension between classical piecing and improv piecing. Using the “wonk o’ meter” you could either trend toward the classical piecing side or the improv piecing side when making your version. It just depends how much wonk you like. 🙂

Maybe I could have pushed the irregularity a little bit further… and if (when?) I make another version I may. To be honest it’s just fun to make and see what happens. I feel like I could make 100 of these quilts and each would be unique.

So what do you think? Where might you fall on the “wonk o’meter”.