RUNNING IN CIRCLES

I'm wondering what quilting style I am, modern or traditional.  I feel like I'm all over the map because I travel in both categories..  But are there certain elements that continue to creep into my designs regardless of style??? Am I in an aesthetic quandary because I love both?? Is there any commonality or a central theme?  I'm on a quest to find out.

My profile indicates I live in two eras......colonial and modern, yesterday and future. Our home leans  colonial/folk art/primitive and certainly hand crafted.  My studio is lighter, more modern. Colonial interiors are steeped in history.  You don't need to change your look with every fleeting design or color trend.....seriously, you can't rewrite design history. Although I love my antiques, perhaps they are holding me back.  Ideally, I would separate my studio from my house, with it's own entrance away from duties and responsibilities leaving me a clean white canvas to work in.  I would make it a nice warm white, Benjamin Moore Simply White to be exact.  With lots of color correct daylight tracks.  And polyurethane cement floors for easy clean up.  Oh, I would love that!  If my work space was white and modern instead of cozy warm and historical, would my influence shift?  

My surroundings affect my inspiration and creativity.  So am I modern at my core, or historically colonial?  Is there another aspect that connects both?  I gathered a group of quilts I finished over the past decade and found one thing that resurfaces over and over again, old or new......

Watermelon - a small art quilt painted on stabilizer and overlay of mesh and Lutrador, with seed beads.

Flowers in the Field - a modern take on the traditional Dresden Plate design, circular motion.  I fussy cut each of the wedges from the same border fabric to achieve completely different plates, a modified a stack and whack technique.  The plates were then hand appliqued.

Happy Mothers Day - round elements again done in brightly colored batik Dresden plate style for my mom.  Again, all hand applique.  Mom loves purple....me, not so much.

Losing my Mother - an abstract art quilt designed as a challenge from an art group I belong to.  The theme was our mother.  My mother is 94, still alive, but suffers from dementia.  The circles depict her 

youthful brightness and how life with dementia shifted into darkness. 

Finding Their Way - a rainbow colored circular Mariners Compass design honoring the many GLBT children that find themselves navigating an often hostile and misunderstanding public. 

Running in Circles - wow....where do I start?  My bucket list included a Nancy Crow workshop which I attended December 2012.  Each student completed 4-40" squares with similar circular motifs. Each "block" was cut by hand with a 60mm rotary cutter, no templates or rulers!!!  Oy!!  BUT....what was I going to do with an 80" square modern bed quilt?? I decided to reconfigure one blocks, which follows. The other three are in process, or rather inspiration pending. I machine quilted each space with matching threads.....which equates to a lot of thread changes!!! I need to plug her 
workshops.....the most intense, hardworking and well worth it workshop I've attended, but not for the faint of heart.  HIGHLY recommended!!!!

Oodles of Spools - a wool applique rather than a quilt, but definitely following the circular theme.

Wreath of Laurel - a colonial red and green reproduction pattern, again with a strong circular movement.

So....the circuluar movement theme certainly carries through my work whether modern or historical.  Each circular element evokes movement, and yet I'm still not sure which style I identify with most.  But one thing I know for certain.  I LOVE COLOR, bright and contrasting.  Nothing pastel or light for this artist.