Oops, it’s modern art

This month's quilt is a quiet tribute to my adopted home (happy birthday USA!). Red, White, & BOLD started as a simple idea and evolved into something structured, crisp, and, unexpectedly, a little bit modern art.

When I first imagined the block, it was a simple two-color design: navy and white, clean and sharp. But something niggled at me, it needed color and I couldn’t resist experimenting. What if I added a pop of red? What if it wasn’t just an accent, but a feature that shifted and grew across the quilt? I made a few trial blocks with the narrowest red pinstripes — just a touch of color — and put them up on the design wall.

And then I stared at them.

The design pulled me in, and soon I was asking: what if the red increased? What if the blocks themselves carried a visual gradient? Back to the design software I went and little by little, the quilt evolved—not through a deliberate plan, but through the quiet process of experimenting and stepping back to look.

The colors — rich Kona solids in navy, white, and red — sharpened the whole effect. As the quilt grew, it felt less like rows of blocks and more like a modern art piece. When I took a photo of the design wall (something I always do to help spot inconsistencies or layout issues), I had one of those small, satisfying moments: it didn’t look like a pieced quilt anymore.
It looked like a bold, structured print — crisp, balanced, and full of energy.
Almost Vasarely-like, with its quiet shifts in volume and its sharp edges.

Gracie, of course, was right there through the whole process. I was lying on the floor, staring at the wall, taking it all in — and she came over to make sure she was still the center of the action, tail wagging all the time. (Vizsla approval is serious business around here.)

Looking back over the past few months, I can see a quiet thread running through my work: Swell Lines, Lavender Haze, Moody Blues, and now Red, White, & BOLD — all exploring fabric placement, volume, and movement across the quilt top. Creating movement from static shapes and colors is interesting and a fun challenge. It wasn’t a deliberate direction, but it’s been useful for finding what satisfies my brain.

This quilt feels like a fitting piece of the creative puzzle: bold, bright, crisp — and a satisfying ‘problem’ to solve.