Melting Pot of Traditional and Modern Flair

Do you think any traditional craft can be modernized?  Maybe there is room for growth in all crafts.  The craft that I learned first, when I was around 8 years old, was cross-stitching.  I was taught by my mom and my aunt so I think I enjoy it so much because I know it runs in the family.  Our Christmas stockings were all cross-stitched by me and they are my favorite thing to pull out each year!  They are so special.  Here are the kids stockings with our elf on the shelf, I can't believe I don't have pictures of them alone.

 Anyway, very traditional patterns, what you think of when you think of cross-stitching, right?  But what about modernizing it.  I have thought it over for awhile, researched a bit on Pinterest and such and I felt adding modern things like graphic style designs and typography might modernize it a bit.  So here are some designs I came up with and finished today.

What do you think?  Can cross-stitching be modernized with designs like those?  I would love to hear your thoughts!

Hyperdrive

When my son said he wanted a Star Wars quilt two thoughts went through my head.

First, "OMG he's getting super addicted to Star Wars and he's only 5!" (Of course I didn't really need to get worried about him being 5 because now my 3 year old is super addicted to Star Wars because of his brother).

Second, "This could be fun, hmmm, what can I pull out of Star Wars that would make an awesome quilt."

At the same time, the Modern Quilt Guild was having one of their project modern challenges and it was to use all solids.

What popped into my head was this:

So, I started drafting some ideas (I prefer pen and paper) and came up with a starburst sketch with a circle in the middle like a black hole.  I had not made very many quilts at the time and it seemed so way out of my skill level, but I figured I would give it a shot.

Here is how it turned out:

I really can't believe I figured out how to do this on my own, I still consider myself a beginner!  I let Little Man pick out the binding since it was his quilt and he chose this cool sparkly star binding.

You can also see my stippled border. In the middle I quilted a spiral and for the rest I just quilted a starburst pattern starting from the center to give that extra feel of speed.

Since I had a bunch of blue scraps sitting around after cutting out all the pieces, I decided to try an improv pieced back.  I like how it turned out, but the front is my fave!

I didn't actually get it done in time to enter the solids challenge, but this quilt is totally loved on by my Star Wars loving boy.  That's what really matters anyway!