This is part of a year-long series of posts about the quilts from Modern Patchwork. I'm highlighting a different quilt each month, and will be remaking each of the book quilts in some way. This month, I'm making a new version of the Rapid City quilt, which is on Pages 42 - 51 in Modern Patchwork.
The Rapid City quilt is so named because it was inspired by Vandamm's (James Mason's) awesome Mt. Rushmore-adjacent hideout in North by Northwest.
I used pieces of Heather Moore's Cut Out and Keep collection surrounded by larger areas of colorful coordinating Kona solids. There's a lot more solid than print fabric, but the colors of the solid fabrics are drawn from the prints and the pieces of print fabrics are surrounded by graphic areas of solid color, which lets the prints shine in a way they might not if the entire quilt were made with only print fabrics.
Page 51 in Modern Patchwork includes a table showing the size and dimensions of all the pieces you'll need to make the block components, making this a really easy project to adapt for scrap quilting. I think this quilt would look fabulous in a color scheme like the one I'm using for my Farmer's Wife blocks with an array of bright solids and fussy-cut pieces of mainly black and white prints.
The quilt I'm making this month is going to incorporate fussy-cut pieces of Monica Solorio-Snow's new holiday collection, Winterkist, in red, teal, and gray. I'm going to use the chart on Page 51 to cut enough pieces to make 9 blocks for a finished lap quilt that measures about 49" x 64".
The block components (by which I mean the parts that aren't the background or the trees/crossbars) in the book quilt are made with a single piece of print fabric and the rest solid fabrics. In my Winterkist quilt, I'm going to reverse that and use a single piece of solid fabric and the rest print fabrics in the same color.
My solids are Kona Black, Kona Coral, and Kona Cyan. In the photo you can see how the Black and the Coral in particular coordinate with, but don't exactly match, the print fabrics. When combining solid and print fabrics, particularly in monochromatic groups like this, I often find that selecting a solid with a slight difference in value or intensity will result in a more interesting composition than selecting solids that are exactly the same color as the print fabrics.
Of course, the centerpiece of Monica's collection is this fantastic Gnoma Claus panel print. Since I am a fussy cutting enthusiast, I'm definitely going to make sure there are plenty of Gnoma Claus faces in my block components!
In order to get the parts that I want, I'm having to cut at odd angles (i.e. not with the grain) on many of these, so I've prepared my fabric by pressing it with a healthy amount of Best Press (starch alternative). When I put the quilt together, all of the surrounding pieces will be cut with the grain of the fabric, so I'm not too concerned about the fussy-cut Gnomas being a little off-grain. I'll just need to handle them with care, just as I would triangles, curves, or anything else with a bias-cut edge.
Here's what my fussy-cut Gnomas look like so far. Because of their size, none of the pieces will be an entire Gnoma. Instead, it's going to be kind of like the Gnomas are peeking out from the blocks.
I'll post next week about making the blocks!
