well, not quite instant. It actually took a couple of afternoons to make the quilt top you see below, but it was still a very satisfying experience. After working for weeks on several projects requiring a lot of time and effort, I was itching to work on something new. Something that would go together very quickly and be fun to make.
A quilt from the March/April 2012 issue of McCall’s Quilting magazine caught my eye: Silhouette, designed by Kari Nichols.
The quilt is made entirely of black and white fabrics — a favorite combo of mine. The pattern calls for pairs of prints that are positive/negative. If you look at the outer borders of the quilt in the photo above, you’ll see what I mean by that. I already had some positive/negative pairs in my stash, and I found some additional fabrics in the Night and Day line by Exclusively Quilts that I thought would work very well.
In Kari’s design the two squares in the center of the quilt are made of four triangles, and all of the triangles are made of two pieces. I didn’t want seams interrupting the design of my beautiful prints, so I altered the cutting and construction methods. My triangles are solid pieces cut from strips, and the two squares are made of two triangles instead of four. My quilt top went together very quickly, in part because it contains 44 pieces instead of the 68 pieces called for in the magazine instructions. It measures 59″ x 72″, a generous lap size.
I have a feeling this is a design I will make more than once. A scaled down version in primary colors would make a great baby quilt, don’t you think? And I could see a modern version made with contemporary prints or batiks or gradated fabrics.
Of course I’m thinking about what to call this black-and-white version. I’m leaning toward Day for Night, after the 1973 film by French director Francois Truffaut.