Obviously, quilt fashions, trends, styles etc have changed over the years. I am attempting to unpack the underlying differences with these changes that I only noticed from a distance during those years I was not quilting and did not unpack in real time. My fabric stash simply does not work with many of the fabrics that are around today in both colour and design. My tastes also have changed and understanding the theory behind these changes will/should make it easier for me to make fabric decisions going forward.
Things I have noticed about modern fabrics relate to both colour and pattern. White is being used as a background. There is much more grey being used both as a background and as a tone. There are lots of quilters designing fabrics (sometimes I think not that well skilled) and they design differently. So many fabrics have one-way patterns on them and what I call spotty patterns as in an emblem just sitting spaced on a background with no connections between. These are not sophisticated designs. Fabric designers have become celebrities. Quilters make quilts out of just a range of fabrics or from one designer. This has always happened but is much more acceptable now. It never was for me.
To me it's like paint by numbers. I always like to choose my own fabrics and the fun was choosing them across ranges and designers. There were also rules or recommendations around patterns that I don't see today. Quilts are made without a variety of print sizes and styles. Low-volume fabric is a concept I have had to come to understand. It's not new just fashionable. I soon preferred quilts with low-volume backgrounds rather than solids but now there seems to be a change in balance to many low-volume fabrics in a quilt.
Modern quilters use white backgrounds. I was taught by the likes of Joan Wolfram to never use white - it makes a hole in your quilt. Black was much more popular. I actually like the move to light backgrounds but still maybe not white.
So I signed up for a Zoom with Kelsey Swatske. It was interesting and confirmed some of my thinking about what young quilters are doing today. However, I did not agree with her selection of what she called pure colours that she put together. They did not work together - the dark green was so wrong in that selection and then she added another green - horrors. They weren't my fabrics or colours but I totally disagree that those fabrics worked together I just have to understand why now!
The fabrics she demonstrated putting together did harmonise - she is totally into analogous colour schemes - but there was no discussion about the balance of prints. There was one larger-scale print and many low-volume - some so low they read as solid. I didn't like that balance. Many of the low-volume prints are boring and including up to six fabrics of this style is boring - I think. Maybe dull is a better word.
Overall Kelsey makes gorgeous quilts. They remind me of antique quilts and their success is due mainly to the analogous colour scheme. I will use this new understanding but I will always make more conscious decisions around print styles.
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