Paper Pieced Modern Blog Hop

Amy FriendBook Review111 Comments

I was asked to join Amy Garro’s blog hop for her new title, Paper Pieced Modern: 13 Stunning Quilts Step-by-Step Visual Guide.  Amy blogs at 13 Spools, if you are not yet familiar with her work.  Like me, she enjoys making modern, paper pieced quilts.  I am going to share one of her designs in my post today.  It’s called Ceiling Tiles.  I decided to interview Amy to mix things up.  Here goes!
Photo by C&T Publishing

Photo by C&T Publishing

During Quiet Time:  What’s your favorite thing about this design?
Amy Garro:  Hmm, my favorite thing about this design is that it’s so simple. Like a lot of my quilts, it has sharp angles, but this one is much more restful to look at. It has a feeling of “quiet activity” to me – It’s not so quiet as, say, Apple Stars (from the book), or my Plus quilt, but it is calming to me with its minimal and repetitive design.
Ceiling Tiles 1
During Quiet Time:  How did you arrive at the name?  Were you inspired by actual ceiling tiles somewhere?  If so, where and do you have a picture?
Amy Garro:  So I actually named this quilt after I designed it. I was fiddling around with the single shape in the quilt, finding the perfect combination of overlap & repeat. When I settled on a design I realized it looked like some lights in a ballroom that I was once in – but I can’t remember which one! When I decided to name the quilt, I thought of “Ceiling Tiles” and it just stuck. “Ballroom Light Fixture” was not nearly so catchy, haha.
During Quiet Time:  Sometimes when I make a quilt I think of another color palette that I would love to see the pattern made up in (but there is only so much time in a day).  Is there another way you’d love to see this quilt made?
Amy Garro:  There is definitely another colorway I’d love to see this in! I think red, white, and gray would make a fabulous Christmas season quilt, and I really want to sew it sometime. I had originally planned this to be a cream + red quilt, so I think that’s way I’m gravitating towards those colors. I actually gained my inspiration for that original colorway from this quilt.
ceiling tiles original colorway
This was Amy’s original colorway.
christmas ceiling tiles
This is a mock up of a Christmas inspired colorway.
During Quiet Time:  What pattern designers influence your work and how?
Amy Garro:  There aren’t that many, actually. I tend to look toward architecture, blueprints, masonry, and various mathematical and electrical sketches for inspiration. A lot of my designs actually come from sketches my husband draws up for me. I also get a lot of inspiration from Charlotte (http://displacementactivity.com). And I spend ridiculous amounts of time on Pinterest, which is a visual feast! I look there for color palette and quilting ideas. Angela Walters, obviously, is a great source of inspiration for that. Otherwise, there are tons of designers who don’t necessarily influence my work directly, but whose work I admire incredibly: you, for starters, and then Carolyn Friedlander (http://carolynfriedlander.com/), Casey York (https://studioloblog.wordpress.com/), Kyndra Brown (http://www.sewlio.com), Meg Callahan (http://megcallahan.com/) – I could go on and on!
During Quiet Time:  I promise I didn’t ask Amy for that unexpected compliment!
During Quiet Time:  What fabric designs/designers do you particularly gravitate toward when choosing fabrics for your quilts and why?
Amy Garro:  My obsession with Carolyn Friedlander & Parson Gray is quite public by now, haha! I lean towards masculine prints, solids, and linens. When I do use prints, my preference is to use monochromatic prints, or ones with only 2 or 3 colors (including white). Though I love how they look on their own, I’m not a big multi-colored print girl when it comes to putting fabrics in a quilt.
During Quiet Time: I tend to gravitate toward similar “blenders” so this is something I think we have in common.
During Quiet Time:  Do you consider all your work to be modern or a mix of modern and traditional?
Amy Garro:  I’d love to say I’m just straight-up modern, because that’s how it feels to me, yet I look at a lot of my quilts and see how they could be classified as modern-traditionalism, or even just traditional, because of my reliance on a gridded-block system, and complete lack of improv-quilting. I would say that there tends to be an emphasis on strong lines and sharp points in most of my work. Even my quilts that some might classify as traditional (like this quilt, or my Faceted Jewels II have these characteristics. That makes them still seem very “me” from my point of view.
During Quiet Time:  What’s your favorite quilt in the book and why?
Amy Garro:  Is it too predictable and  boring to say the cover quilt? That’s definitely it! Icy Waters.  We were having some difficulty squeezing everything into the page count, and seeing as it took up a ridiculous amount of pages, I suggested cutting it – and got a big, fat no on that one from the publisher! They definitely wanted it in there. That was a huge compliment to me, because it was really hard for me to tell what they liked or didn’t like (which is probably them being very professional). I was pretty thrilled to see they used that for the cover.
During Quiet Time:  Thank you for your interview Amy!  This quilt and the cover quilt are my personal favorites!  I lean toward blues and creams and whites but I also like the designs.  Best of luck with your book!
If my readers would like to win a copy (Physical copies available for US winners, and e-copies for international winners!) C+T is kindly offering up one as a prize!  Good luck!

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Take a minute to check out the other quilts in the book by hopping from one blog to the next.

Feb 5th – Lindsay @ Lindsay Sews

Feb 6th – Charlotte @ Displacement Activity

Feb 7th – Molli @ Molli Sparkles

Feb 8th – Elise @ Lovelea Designs

Feb 9th – Amy guest posting @ C&T Publishing

Feb 10th – Darcie @ The Seam Allowance

Feb 11th – Christa @ Christa Quilts

Feb 12th – Amy guest posting @ Craft Buds

Feb 13th – Amy @ 13 Spools

Feb 14th – Chelsea @ Patch the Giraffe

Feb 15th – Amy @ During Quiet Time

Feb 16th – Wrap-up post back at 13 Spools