Good morning, and welcome back to the Modern Applique Illusions blog tour! Today, it’s my pleasure to send you over to Violet Craft‘s blog to read her thoughts about the book!
I’m a huge fan of Violet’s work, and her fabrics actually played a significant role in this book coming to be. I first explored the idea of creating a quilt with the illusion of perspective when I made my entry into the 2012/2013 Modern Quilt Guild designer fabric challenge, which used Violet’s Madrona Road collection for Michael Miller Fabrics. At Quilt Con 2013, I showed my pattern for the resulting quilt–Onwards–to C&T Publishing’s Roxane Cerda, and that was the genesis of Modern AppliquéIllusions!
For the book, I wanted to make a companion to Onwards, and so today’s quilt for the tour–Upward–actually began with its title (onward and upward–get it?). I thought it would be fun to play with applying the idea of one-point perspective to a view looking up instead of forwards.
Felicitously, I was working on this quilt at the same time that Violet was releasing her Waterfront Park collection, inspired by the bridges and parks of Portland, Oregon. I grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, a long distance from Portland, but it shares the characteristic of having a wonderful waterfront park on the western shore of Lake Superior and its port. Things started to fall into place when I thought about the windy areas of Canal Park, perfect for flying kites and homes to flocks of seagulls–the perfect appliqué subjects for my quilt.
The park even boasts an aerial lift bridge–one of the largest in the world–that recalls the lift bridge featured in the Bridgetown print from Violet’s collection.
Spiral quilting seemed like a natural way to convey that dizzying sense you sometimes get when looking up into the sky.
And I simply couldn’t have asked for a better fabric collection to work with–the print of flying birds that I used for the binding seems like it was designed specifically for this quilt.
If you’d like to win some of these fabrics left over from making Upward, please leave a comment on this post! I’ll draw a random winner in three days, at midnight on Nov. 24. And congratulations to Christa, whose name was drawn in the giveaway for the Concrete Jungle scrap bag!
The blog tour is reaching its conclusion, but we still have a few more fabulous stops on the schedule–make sure to check them out over the next couple days, and thanks again for reading!
11/10: C&T Publishing
11/11: Jenifer Dick/42 Quilts
11/12: Debbie Grifka/Esch House Quilts
11/13: Kathy Mack/Pink Chalk Studio
11/14: Shannon Brinkley/Bottle Tree
11/15: Pellon
11/16: Kevin Kosbab/Feed Dog Designs
11/17: Generation Q Magazine
11/18: Krista Robbins/Sew What’s Cooking?
11/19: Fat Quarter Shop/Jolly Jabber
11/20: Violet Craft
11/21: Kristy Daum/St. Louis Folk Victorian
11/22: Cindy Lammon/Hyacinth Quilt Designs
11/23: Modern Quilts Unlimited
studioloblog.wordpress.com 
You are right! This fabric plays so well with this perspective. Nicely done!
I had to look at the quilt picture again to find the birds in the border. And good thinking on the quilting circles. I am so impressed with everything I’ve seen from this book. You’ve put a lot of thought and creative energy into it. kthurn@bektel.com
Oh that is so beautiful! I love the perspective and the childlike whimsy of it!
Lovely quilt and such perfect fabrics to use!
Your fabric choices continue to amaze me! They are so perfect!
I loved your Madrona Road challenge quilt so much that I joined the MQG…does that sound fangirlish? Congratulations on your book!
ljridge4511 (at) gmail (dot) com
This is definitely one of my favorite quilts from the book. So joyful. Thanks for sharing your scraps from this great collection!
Thank you for the close-up of the hand quilting in this piece. I think it is more effective than if you machined quilted the kite strings, really adds to the illusion of looking at kites flying in the sky.
Love this quilt!