Lills Quilt Rack Part I The Inspiration
Lills Quilt Rack Part I The Inspiration
Quilt racks have become a specialty of mine. I was first assigned to make one for my Mother-In-Law in 2012. Since then I’ve also built Katie’s Quilt Rack. Over both builds I’ve found that working within the parameters of a quilt rack (two or three horizontal bars about 30” off the ground about 24” wide) allowed for lots of freedom with the overall form. From the beginning I’ve gone with curved quilt racks as I find the typical rectilinear ones boring.
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| Cathys Quilt Rack |
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| Katies Quilt Rack |
Earlier this year I was tasked with making my third quilt rack. This one is for my Wife’s Aunt Lill’s 90th birthday. It’s made extra special by the fact that Lill is the first real quilter I’ve made a rack for. She’s been making quilts for every newborn in the family for the last five or six decades (my wife and three sons all have them). I’d say she’s probably made over 100 quilts.
For this rack I wanted to push the design even further than I have with my last two. Rather than simply starting with curves, I looked for design inspiration.
This inspiration originally came with a quilt rack I found on Pinterest. While I would always have made it of wood, the crossing legs caught my attention as I felt the forward and rear sweeping legs could be made from contrasting woods for visual contrast.
As I mulled that design over in preparation for Lill’s quilt rack I realized that it was similar to blades of grass crossing each other. As grass blades were more organic that chromed steel tubes, I kept looking along those lines and found this repeating grass blade pattern cut in the back of the benches outside my local library.
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| The grass blade pattern I found inspiring. |
With the inspiration down, it was now time to translate the bench photo into a quilt rack.
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Lills Quilt Rack Part I The Inspiration
