The best known, most well-attended quilt shows are often a celebration of the complex skill and precise execution of quiltmakers. Recognition awards are given to the quilts that are difficult-to-make masterpieces.
And yet, sometimes the simple is the most profound. Half-square triangles are one of the most basic motifs of quilt making. Despite their straightforward nature, quilters have been making interesting and reinvented half-square triangle quilts for hundreds of years.Curated Quilts, Issue no. 12: Half-Square Trianglescelebrates this simple quilt motif and the extraordinary ways in which today’s modern quilters have innovated and reimagined it into the 21st-century.
Vintage Lace by Brittany Lloyd @loandbeholdstitchery
Vintage Lace is inspired by the beautiful intricacies of an old piece of lace. It features 320 half-square triangles that rotate throughout the quilt to give it a delicate, dainty look. The pattern forVintage Lace can be purchased fromwww.loandbeholdstitchery.com.
Quadra by Christine Ricks @christinericks_
Quadrawas created as a way to make something as easy as a half-square triangle come alive. Ricks wanted to explore creating the illusion of depth and making a flat surface appear dimensional when designing this quilt.Quadra was a Modern Quilt Guild Quilt of the Month and the pattern for it can be found on the MGQ website for free.
Scrappy Diamond Ripplesby Meghan Buchanan @thencamejune
While making this quilt, Buchanan challenged herself to use a color palette that was unfamiliar to her, and it taught her a valuable lesson. “I must trust my gut. I am instinct-based and when I doubt my instinct, I rob myself of the joy in creating. Everything about this quilt glows and proves my love of color movement.” The pattern forScrappy Diamond Ripplescan be purchased fromwww.thencamejune.com.
The Mighty Small Quilters by Elisa Sims Albury @stitchoutsidetheditch, Lynn Carson Harris @lynncarsonharris, Chawne Kimbe @cauchycomplete, & Mary Elizabeth Kinch @maryelizabethkinch
After discussing the concept via Skype, the makers of this quilt worked individually to interpret the blocks they had discussed. The individual blocks were then pieced together by Chawne Kimber and it was quilted by Lynn Carson Harris.
The makers say about the quilt, “The setting for improvisational patchwork and piecing in this quilt created a pattern that recalls images of a fractured mirror. This representation reflects what is happening in our society today and is a call to look at ourselves, own our part, and to ask what we can do to make a positive difference in our world.”
Thornbush by Stefanie Satterwhite @satterwhitequilts
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” -Alphonse Karr
Thornbush was inspired by the prolific amount of fruit and flower blossoms Satterwhite saw during her first spring in the Pacific Northwest. The quilt is made of one and a half-inch HST triangles that Satterwhite says required endless chain-piecing marathons and an absurd number of nested seams. The quilt is full of movement and the way color is used creates the prickly points that can be found on rosebushes.
Oh Happy Dayby Yvonne Fuchs @quiltingjetgirl
The design ofOh Happy Day aims to create a feeling of transition starting from the upper left corner and moving to the lower right, with a sense of dissonance along the way. While making this quilt, Fuchs learned that Robert Kaufman was renaming two of its Kona Cotton colors: Pale Flesh to Shell, and Flesh to Bellini. She felt this recognition of the wrongness of the word ‘flesh’ to describe a color being applied to caucasian skin tones was a moment to celebrate, an ‘Oh Happy Day!’ moment. Fuchs says, “Regardless of what you are sewing or doing, I hope you are able to find a moment of happy today.”
You can find these half-square triangle quilts and more inCurated Quilts, Issue no. 12: Half-Square Triangles. Purchase your copy today!