A Maritime Modern Quilt Designer

As you read in the previous post, the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild will be holding an exhibit here Oct 17 and 18 and the Fibre Arts Festival is honoured that this young and energetic guild has chosen us for their début show!  Linda Coolen Smith of Halifax is a member of this guild and will be bringing almost a dozen of her quilts to be part of the show. 

Linda began quilting in 1993 when she moved from N.S. to N.B. and joined the Marco Polo Quilt Guild in Saint John.  Returning to N.S. three years later, she continued to nurture her quilting skills and even worked for a bit at the Quilter's Hope Chest in Halifax before leaving on a different career path.  Linda began as a traditional quilter, first working her stitches by hand, before moving on to free motion machine quilting about 5 years ago.  Here's her very first quilt:

What drew Linda to modern quilting? "The freedom...the improvisation.....the creativity....the use of colour as well as the use of solid fabrics. I've always used solids in my work." Since joining the guild, Linda has felt encouraged and motivated to follow her muse rather than following a pattern.  The result is that she has now begun designing her own quilts, and making those designs available to others.  

The current issue of Quilter's Connection features Linda's very first published design and the N.S. Fibre Arts Festival is excited that this very project will be part of the MMQG exhibit at Amherst Town Hall.

"Colour Columns"embodies what defines modern quilting:  clean, simple lines, bold colour combinations, asymmetrical design and extensive use of white or grey as background. The magazine article shows a finished cushion, but also gives instruction on how to adapt the design to a quilt.

To date, Linda has hand quilted approximately 50 bed sized quilts as well as lots of smaller ones, and has machine quilted over 20 projects. 

These are some of Linda's quilts which will be part of the FAF exhibit.

You can see more of Linda's work on her blog, Scrapmaster.

The Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival extends to Linda a very hearty congratulations on her published design and invites everyone to come see for themselves October 17 and 18, 2014 what Modern Quilting is all about. Bravo, Linda!