Tuning Forks #11 -- Bloggers Quilt Festival

For the last three years, I have been exploring the tuning fork motif.  I love to interlock them, elongate them, scrunch them up, flip them around, explode them...Ok, I admit it, I'm obsessed.

The latest finished product of my obsession is Tuning Fork #11.  I was really driven to finish this quilt -- we had visitors coming and I was so wrapped up in sewing that I was afraid it would haunt me if I didn't finish before they arrived.  It would be dreadful if I started to resent family members for taking up my valuable sewing time.  The best way for me to prevent that is to have an empty design wall during the visit.  So I planned the layout and sewed it in two weeks, and then quilted it and faced it after they left town.

Tuning Fork #11, 53" x 79"

I usually start a quilt with a basic format in mind.  My first thought was that I would make a red and gray quilt.  I love red.  And I wanted to grade the background from light at the top to dark at the bottom.  I also wanted to more or less grade the motif sizes from small to large, although a few small forks snuck into the bottom sections and several pesky large forks wound up closer to the top.  And I decided that the top left should be very low contrast, very mushy.  I wanted to run the red "texture" section, that is the section with smallest blocks,  from the top  right to the bottom center.  And I would place a few rogue red tuning forks in the gray sections.

I quilted TF #11 with medium gray thread in vertical lines.  In places the lines are less than 1/8" apart.  The largest spaces between the lines are probably 3/8".  I like the texture that closely quilted lines give a quilt, and I love to create a rhythm by varying the width of the spaces between lines.

I've linked this post to the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

See the Blogger's Quilt Festival Art Quilts here and vote for your favorite!