In the Auckland Museum my first stop was the gallery featuring New Zealand design and finely crafted objects of all kinds including several textile numbers, among which is this gorgeous 1964 silk two- piece culotte cocktail suit, by designer Colin Cole. It was not made clear whether the fabric design was his, or not.

Anyone who has been paying attention to developments in contemporary quilt design will recognise this pattern in the fabric as having been done over and over, I wouldn’t say done to death but it has become a modern quilting classic, which I attribute to the development of freehand rotary cutting and piecing methods mostly – as well as being a totally natural way to divide a square by curved non-intersecting lines. Although many quilt artists have totally abandoned any suggestion of repeat or block design in their desire to avoid anything to do with the traditional quilting world, I have always found it fascinating to explore the nontraditional within structures of repeat blocks and units.

Several of my quilts built of blocks in this design including John and Sue’s Quilt, Mary and Joyce’s Quilt, Diamantina, Spinifex, and Tidal Shallows 1 & 2 can be found in the gallery pages of my website, www.alisonschwabe.com
The colours I really love.