Anni

The Anni quilt is my entry for the Modern Quilt Guild's Project Modern: Challenge 2--Monochromatic. It's made out of four shades of pink solid cotton, and the design was inspired by the Modernist artist Josef Albers' series of works titled Homage to the Square. His wife Anni was a fibers artist who worked as a weaver and also designed textiles. Anni believed that fabrics should be considered as an art form in and of themselves, in both their functional use day to day, but also in their use as hanging works of art. So, I felt it was fitting to name my quilt after her.

I sketched out this quilt design a few months ago, after browsing through some works by Albers. I thought his square paintings would relate nicely to quilt blocks.

Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: With Rays, 1959

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In my design I decided to shift the layout of the squares. I placed the smallest square directly on the base of the larger square, instead of having the square float inside the larger one, as they frequently do in Albers' paintings. While I was planning the project, I was immediately drawn to using pink fabrics for the quilt. After a long, cold winter, I thought a nice pop of pink would would do me some good.

The quilt measures 62'' x 62'', and each of its four large blocks measures just over 24'' square. I used four shades of pink cotton: the center of the smallest square is Robert Kaufman's Kona Medium Pink, the middle sized square is Moda's Bella Peony, the largest square is Bella Magenta, and the sashing and binding is Kona Pale Flesh.

The backing is Bella Peony with one small pieced square, repeating the design on the front of the quilt.

I really think the large scale of the blocks, with the shift in color from lighter to darker pink, gives this quilt a lot of movement. The framing of the blocks with the palest pink provides visual emphasis to each pieced square, but also ties everything together in the form of yet another square.

I love the look of heavy quilting and all the texture that it adds to a quilt. I decided to use 1/4'' straight line quilting with light pink thread for this project because I think it really compliments the square motifs of the design.

Jeff first introduced me to Albers in college and here is a photo of Aidan and Olivia in front of a version in red at the Dayton Art Institute. As you can see, our family is a fan of Albers' work. ;)

I'm really pleased with how this project turned out and I can't wait to make more versions of this in lots of different colors! I'l be writing up the pattern soon and sharing it with you here on the blog, and I'd love to see your version of Anni too.