Modern Fans

Modern Fans is a pattern by Suzy Quilts, who masterfully combines modern improv elements and more traditional piecing in her designs.

I was immediately attracted to the quilt due to its graphic quality. I've never been able to resist a black and white quilt, and though I am really stressed by the fabric picking process in general, at least for this quilt I just had to pick one fabric to go with the black / white. I ended up choosing this icy blue fabric I got from a trip to Hawaii.

I knew I wanted to fill the background with a wavy design, but I wanted to add just a few visual elements in the background to break it up. This is a rare time that I actually marked the points and connected them with rulers, because I wanted them to look perfectly symmetrical.

The fan blocks are quilted very simply with just some straight lines and a simple geometric design. It doesn't really show, but then again, it's not supposed to.

This is one of those quilts where I could have just done horizontal lines across the quilt and it would have looked great too. But I also saw it as an opportunity to practice the wavy design over a large background space, something I've always wanted to do and haven't tried yet.

I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out. I used to be terrified of doing the wavy design, but it seems after More Fishies and now Modern Fans, I've finally gotten comfortable with it!