Friday Inspiration

Here's a little inspiration for your Friday:

"Spiral Squared," by Wendy Sheppard of Ivory Spring. Wendy used the Zest collection from Kanvas, paired with white, to create her geometric design.

"Spiral Squared" by Wendy Sheppard,
featured in McCall's Quilting magazine, January/February 2014 issue

We asked Wendy to tell us more about this cool quilt:

What did you find appealing about the Zest fabrics?
I was attracted to Zest by the geometric designs. I am a geometry-oriented person, and my heart sang when I saw the fabrics in yellow and gray colorways.


Your light and dark "split" is not in the traditional corner spot, like in a Sunshine and Shadows Log Cabin design. Can you talk about how you decided where to divide the light and dark sections?
I wanted to use only rectangles or squares to construct the quilt top so that even the most beginning quilters wouldn't be scared off by having to do triangles. I am hoping the quilt would appeal to even teenagers to try out quilting because it is a design with a bit of "cool" factor.


Why did you decide to use just a yellow print in the outer two borders? 
I want the focus to be on the spiral itself.  So, the subdued yellow print in the two borders are just supporting the central design.


Favorite print in the collection? 

The backing fabric.

How do you envision this quilt being used? 

Though contemporary in design, I can actually see the quilt display in an old fashioned home decor setting for a contrasting accent.  

The machine quilting is beautiful! Tell us about it.

The white negative space was perfect for quilting.  Since the width isn't too wide, I decided to just do textured quilting to let the fabrics really shine.  A note to machine quilters - such negative space is perfect for practicing a quilting motif because any mistakes will be masked in the overall look of the quilt.  

See more photos of Wendy's quilt, including close-ups of her machine quilting on this quilt, and her other work, here.

See the entire Zest collection here.

Find McCall's Quilting here.