Channeling My Inner Nancy Purvis

Have you encountered the recent controversy about derivative quilt design? It began with a post on the Modern Quilt Guild’s blog about copyright and entering quilts into QuiltCon. I think it’s an important conversation to have, but all the gray in the middle of that discussion can hurt my brain. (Update: The Modern Quilt Guild has since retracted that initial post. You can read about its decision here.)

That’s why I’m happy to reveal these two projects. They’re not derivative. They’re not inspired by. They’re 100% swiped from Nancy Purvis’s Instagram feed!

You may know Nancy from her blog, Owen’s Olivia, or from her book, Quilting from Every Angle. She also showed several quilts at QuiltCon 2016, earning a ribbon for Reflection. Nancy’s designs are fresh and modern.

Since I won’t be entering these quilts into competitions or creating patterns related to them or earning any money whatsoever from them, I am confident the copyright police won’t come after me ...

The first is a project slated to use up the Carolyn Friedlander/Botanics scraps from my Park Bench quilt. I’ve been using a rotary blade without a ruler to cut these scraps into straight-ish strips, sewing them back together with some Kona Silver, and squaring up the blocks. (You can see Nancy’s own projects along these same lines here, here, and here.) This quilt, after just a few completed blocks, is now on the back burner. I look forward to making it a priority again before the end of the year.

The second project is a quickie whole-cloth baby quilt that uses some Heather Ross fabric from Nursery Versery and Briar Rose. Again, my approach was all Nancy.

Although I routinely avoid marking my projects prior to quilting, this is the first time I’ve used the fabric design (as opposed to the seam lines) to plot my quilting. The problem with that approach is, over time, the grain of a fabric can warp as it sits on the bolt, which is what happened with my cut of Nursery Versery. Heather Ross describes the process of remedying this problem as “trueing the fabric” in her book Weekend Sewing. I’ve never had luck with trueing my fabric; once a fabric design is warped, it stays that way. So instead of quilting horizontal and vertical lines as Nancy did, which I thought could reveal my fabric’s imperfections, I sewed diagonal lines. They’re more forgiving. Now that the project is quilted and bound, I’m barely aware of the wonkiness.

I bound this baby quilt in Michael Miller’s Cotton Couture in orange. I’ve used Cotton Couture plenty of times, just never for binding. Its soft hand makes for a happier binding experience.

OK, I’ll admit it: Nancy is a quilting crush of mine. I opted not to try to get into one of her QuiltCon 2017 classes and am already kicking myself for it. Whose work have you been turning to for inspiration—or flat-out stealing!—lately?

Linking up to Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Finish It Up Friday ...