Have you heard of the Gees Bend quilts and their quilt makers?  Many of the leaders in the Modern Quilt movement, have considered their quilts a significant  influence on their work. 

Did you know that you can create a Gees Bend-like quilt using Electric Quilt?   Check out the latest designs from those in the Tech Know Quitlers EQ8 Membership Studio.

Gees Bend Background
 
Information from:
http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers
 
 “The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. The seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of slaves, and for generations they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Quilt makers there have produced countless patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, with the oldest existing examples dating from the 1920s. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of African American art.
 
Gee’s Bend quilts carry forward an old and proud tradition of textiles made for home and family. They represent only a part of the rich body of African American quilts. But they are in a league by themselves. Few other places can boast the extent of Gee’s Bend’s artistic achievement, the result of both geographical isolation and an unusual degree of cultural continuity. In few places elsewhere have works been found by three and sometimes four generations of women in the same family, or works that bear witness to visual conversations among community quilting groups and lineages. Gee’s Bend’s art also stands out for its flair—quilts composed boldly and improvisationally, in geometries that transform recycled work clothes and dresses, feed sacks, and fabric remnants.”

The Tech Know Quilters in the Modern Quilt class were challenged to create their own quilt in the spirit of Gees Bend using Electric Quilt.  I think after looking at the quilts you will agree that they did an amazing job.

Would you like to learn how to create your own modern quilts?  

If you missed the tutorial last week, I shared how to design a quilt around a panel.  My quilt used a new collection of fabrics from Robert Kaufman called Picture This.  You can still watch the video here.

In this weeks free video tutorial I will be sharing with you how to jazz up your project with applique.  You will learn how to create motifs from blocks in the EQ library and add them to your quilt, a quick resize method, and how to rotate and position the motifs on your quilt.

Here is the quilt from the video.

If you would like additional practice with this technique, add the same applique images to the alternate quilt from last week.

I would love to see what you create from this tutorial.

Tech Know Quilters Highlights
​Check out a few of the fantastic designs shared within the Tech Know Quilter's Facebook group this week.  There have also been numerous shares for our July challenge -- but I am saving those for a future post.

Would you like to join Tech Know Quilters.  Membership is now closed, however click here to sign up for notification of the next open enrollment period.

Are you just getting started with Electric Quilt 8 and need some help? 

Shoot for the Stars is designed to get you started with Electric Quilt 8 through training delivered straight to your inbox.  This series includes 14 short (ie. 5-10 minute) videos delivered over the course of a month allowing you to learn the basics of this complex program in bite size increments.

​The class is currently on sale for $25 (regular $35).  Join now.

Robert Kaufman has a wonderful new collection of fabric panels called Picture This.  In this weeks video tutorial, I will share will you how to use one of their panels for a quilt, import and resize coordinating fabrics and then design a coordinating pieced border - all using EQ8.

Here are the two quilts from the video.

Next week, I will be sharing with you my thoughts on embellishing these quilts.

Those in the Tech Know Quilters group have been working on their latest challenge to apply what they learned during the July class.   I will be highlighting these quilts in a future post -- but wanted to give the group a couple of weeks for their design juices to flow.

Members have also started their August classes.  Here are a few of the submitted designs this week.

Would you like to join Tech Know Quilters.  Membership is now closed, however click here to sign up for notification of the next open enrollment period.

Are you just getting started with Electric Quilt 8 and need some help? 

Shoot for the Stars is designed to get you started with Electric Quilt 8 through training delivered straight to your inbox.  This series includes 14 short (ie. 5-10 minute) videos delivered over the course of a month allowing you to learn the basics of this complex program in bite size increments.

​The class is currently on sale for $25 (regular $35).  Join now.

Reeze Hanson of Morning Glory Designs is partnering with me on lessons focused on converting Electric Quilt designs into formal patterns.  Our first collaborated lesson appeared this last week in the Tech Know Quilters Modern Quilts session.  More will be added during future months.   

Reeze is a talented pattern designer specializing in designs that incorporate both pieced and applique components.  I know you will want to hear her story.

​EQ is the reason I became a designer.  Hi, I am Reeze Hanson and my design career started because I needed help drawing blocks and arranging them in quilts. 

When I was learning to quilt I joined several online quilt groups and we participated in dozens of block exchanges.  Before long, my sewing room was spilling over with bags of swap blocks and I needed a way to turn them into quilts.  A friend told me about EQ4, I got a copy and taught myself to use it.  I designed settings for all the blocks I received, and then designed settings for others in the group.  They liked my ideas and wanted instructions, so I started writing patterns!

I started teaching with EQ5.  It was the first Windows version of EQ and was vastly improved from the earlier DOS versions.  I offered classes at my local quilt shop and soon began teaching all over the midwest. 
​
Then, my local quilt shop challenged me to come up with some table runner patterns they could sell and kit, and that was the start of my professional career.  I designed 12 table runner patterns featuring one-patch centers, and applique borders.  I called them Charming Botanicals as a play on words.
Here is the EQ image of one of the first of these table runners.  This the September Asters and Morning Glories runner.  I designed the linked diamond background to look like a trellis and wanted the flowers to be wound in the trellis. I made this flower to look like an aster.

It wasn’t exactly what I wanted.   I kept researching photos of morning glories.  I finally found an image I liked in an old embroidery pattern.  This image had the flower shape I wanted, the leaves, buds, and tendrils.

It was just the look I wanted with the two flowers mixed together.  I drew each flower, leaf, vine segment, bud and tendril separately, and composed the completed vine on the quilt worktable.  That way I could manipulate the placement, rotation and size of each of the elements of the vine.

Enjoy some of the quilts created this week by the talented Tech Know Quilters members.

Join the wait list for the next open enrollment period of Tech Know Quilters.