Several things in the last month or so have prompted me to look again at Amish quilts. I wrote about a recent experience here on this blog post. I had rediscovered some already cut strips of solid Amish colours that I had tucked away along with a big bin of all my solid fabrics from previous Amish quiltmaking.
This quilt is the result, it is away now at Lynn's, our local longarm quilter so I don't have a picture of it quilted. I sewed it using precut pieces and the Courthouse Steps traditional log cabin pattern with thanks to Heather Stewart for her inspiration. I had made this quilt last fall which I started in Heather's workshop. I loved making it so it was time to make another but bigger. The new one is bigger, 30 blocks plus a border.
All this inspired me to search through some old scanned slides of some of my previous Amish quiltmaking. I especially am fond of "Quiet in the Land" and "Just Plain Fancy"—both names come from books about the Amish. Quiet in the Land is by Ann Chislett, a play about an Amish family who are conscientious objectors and Just Plain Fancy is a children's picture book by Patricia Pollaco. Pictures of my Amish quilts can be found here in my Flickr photostream.
All this would not have been accomplished had I not worked through Roberta Horton's An Amish Adventure, a wonderful book that taught me a lot about colour as well as how to "quilt Amish". I also attended a lecture by David Pottinger around the same time and was inspired by his Quilts of the Indiana Amish.
Just the other day I had an email from Amazon, with a link to a new book. It still amazes me that they track our purchases and send out emails when a new book comes out that we might be interested in because we have bought something similar before. Urban and Amish: Classic Quilts and Modern Updates by Myra Harder looks at traditonal Amish quilts and then new, modern ones that have been inpsired by the old Amish ones. On the Amazon page you can see images of quite a few of the quilts. Some work, some don't as far as I can tell without seeing the actual book. I am not convinced that Amish quilts need to be modernized!