Signature Style in Art Quilts – Part 1
Now here I go out on a limb…
For commercial reasons, I am changing to a new signature look in the art quilts I make for sale. There are 3 reasons, and the first is that the art quilts in my “new” series are SELLING!! from my website, Quilts4U.com.
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Another reason is that at this period in my life (stressful) I find it soothing to stitch stitch stitch away, arrange the chunks on my design wall, do some hand applique and then have fun developing and building up big circular and diagonal quilting lines. It’s valid and important to have these periods of reflection. Another reason for this change is the challenge of developing different color palettes that in turn make reasons 1 and 2 effective and pleasurable.
Shown above are Aerial View, Circus and 3 ring circus. These quilts are from the new series I am developing. All are fairly big, on average 60″, (150 cm) wide. (Circus doesn’t have those black patches, it’s a filler in the photo file.)
As I build a quilt on the design wall I try to see through 
the viewer’s eye – is my work engaging or is it boring? The palette is important, yet, for my personal way of working with color, I must stray away from the palette to avoid uniformity, to add some pop and maybe some sizzle too. If it’s possible to judge by the quilt sales of the three art quilts shown above, buyers are captured by the choppy, pieced style with black accents.
I forage, fish and ferret around my daily life for inspiring palettes. Here is a snippet from a Christmas card I received. I may use this group of colors in a future quilt. I like the muted olive and teal tones with the suggestions of deep purples and lime. Tiches of lemon, black and white will add zest.
I believe my work remains fresh. I repeat the technique and each quilt develops its character. My new style is reworked through my choice of fabrics. I use about 6-10% commercially printed cotton and the rest are my own hand dyed cottons and silks. My style is reworked with value and contrast. My style finds variety in the size, width, length, irregularity, etc. of the individual shapes/patches of fabric.
What do you think about series quilts? Must/should a series be predictable? Should each quilt say something big-different, or little-different? What’s typical anyway.
I’d love to hear your input because this topic is in everyone’s mind, somewhere, I think it is, maybe not.
I’ll be writing a future post about the Commercial, Museum and Gallery displays and representations of professional quilt artists and their Series Quilts. 
