Traditional as Modern
Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I’m not a big fan of the tension between traditional and modern quilting. I’ve made traditional. I’ve made modern. I’ve made modern with traditional. I’ve made a lot of things that are just quilts. I spend more time with a modern guild and modern quilters, but it’s not at the expense of respecting and learning from traditional sources. I think that we as quilters and people are better for acknowledging that both sides (and everything in between) have much to bring to our craft and art.
In my Web wanderings recently, I came across a digitized collection of early 20th century quilt design paintings. The 419 watercolor paintings were done by Virginia Beauchamp around 1919-1923, but many depict quilts from the previous century. What drew me into the collection was how her framing and cropping of the quilt down to the desired design motif is incredibly similar to how we often make modern traditional quilts.
Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a traditional quilt design and making it in solids.

cumulus from color continuum — no. 01 monochromatic by Emily Cier

Stacked Zigzags by Rebecca @alreadyinmypjs
Other times, we take a single block and make it very large.

Giant Starburst by Megan Pitz

Fly Away by Heather Jones Studio

Tribute Star by Becca Bryan
Some of the paintings go beyond depicting what we call modern traditional and straight into modern.
We break the grid.

F*ck The Quilt Police by Nancy Purvis

Flight Quilt by Alexis Deise

Luxe in Bloom Lone Star by Amy Friend
We decompose the design in places.

State of Being by Cheryl Brickey

Quilt from Strip Your Stash by Gudrun Erla

Contrast by Linda Miller
We use negative space to great effect.

Echoes by Leanne Chahley

Migration by Season Evans
This collection has left me inspired with ideas of quilts to make for years to come. I hope you find similar inspiration.

Further reading:
More about the collection at the Onondaga County Public Library
The digitized collection from New York Heritiage Digital Collections
Thanks to Barbara Brackman for posting about this originally
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