Rerun of quilt in TCQC 11-27-16

I thought I could photograph a few quilts today, but we had sprinkles off and on, so I gave up on that idea.  Here is a quilt originally posted on 04-12-09.

"Electric Chard"  Ruth B. McDowell  2006  32"L x 40"W

Machine pieced and Machine quilted. Cotton fabric and thread.

 

Ruth talks about this quilt in her book "Ruth B. McDowell's Design Workshop" Published by C&T in 2007. She had purchased a bunch of rainbow Swiss chard and admired its variety of colors. She started her fabric choices with the bright colors for the strong vertical stems and greens with patterns that reminded her of the leaf texture. To balance them she used a large-scale pattern with checkerboard elements as an integrated border on the top and bottom. The background is entirely cut from a Michael James stripe that looked good with the fabrics she had already chosen. Usually Ruth uses a great variety of different fabrics for the background, but the departure seemed to work in this quilt.

Ruth finds design ideas for her quilts in the most amazing places. I love the crisp contrasts in this piece. The dark greens stand out from the pale background with its varied pastel stripes. Ruth has used eight leaves, but turned one upside down so that it appears there are an uneven number. It seems brighter in reality than in any of the pictures - it is a cheerful quilt.