Sunday, January 20, 2013

Modern Courthouse Steps

I so love this idea of taking one traditional block and turning it into a quilt! That's exactly what Denyse Schmidt did in her book Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration


 The quilt in the book uses solid fabrics, but I chose to bust some of the stash by using prints in analogous colors of orange/yellow, orange, orange/red, red and fuchsia. For the light strips, I used leftover bits of solids in creams and tans.




It's quilted using the #4 serpentine stitch on my Bernina through the middle of each strip. I've played with this stitch for quilting before, but was never happy with the result. The key was increasing the length quite a bit - length of 4 and width of 5 - and I'm super happy with it.


The back is a combination of a solid cream and print with a 1" strip separating them to mimic the 1" strips in the quilt.


After quilting, I was stumped on a binding, but ended up using the leftover solid pieces for a solid scrappy binding.


I'm wondering what other traditional blocks would look nice blown up as a whole quilt?
. . . Cindy

15 comments:

  1. Hmm serpentine stitch. I wonder if I have that. I'll have to check it out. I love this in a quilt. What size did you cut your strips? I can picture this in an ombré look. I'm always on the search for a great quilt to hang on my wall and this might just be it.

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  2. I really am drawn to square quilts and to orange so this is perfection in my eyes! I've used that stitch before and need to again. Great finish!

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  3. Gorgeous colours and quilt and its got me thinking about other blocks that might work like this.

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  4. This is so pretty, Cindy...love the color choices!

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  5. such dynamic color play! so pretty! (as always) :)

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  6. This is beautiful, Cindy! That Denyse Schmidt book is one of my favorites. Your version turned out wonderfully!

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  7. Gorgeous! I love everything about it.. Great Job!

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  8. Gorgeous! Love these colors! Great work!

    Have a super great sewing and stitching day!

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  9. What a great! quilt! So lovely, and of course, as usual, your work is just impeccable!

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  10. Great quilt. The colors are wonderful.

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  11. this is amazing!! i found this post through Denyse Schmidt's facebook page! how cool are you?

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  12. Super cute! I'm just about to start this project myself. So I googled it and here you are.

    Love how you quilted it. :)

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