Cleveland Ricky - what has Tetris to do with quilting?

 

Cleveland Ricky

64” x 72”, August 2021

Hi There,

I designed this quilt in 2020, and no, not as a lock-down project, but rather, because the pattern idea percolated already for some time. I liked to watch the British crime series ‘Vera’, and on the back-wall of their open-space police office, there is a geometric feature, which I was itching to translate into a quilt.
By 2020, I had made quilts for my eldest sister (for her wedding) and my youngest sister (for a round birthday), however, I hadn’t graced my middle sister with a quilt yet, and intended to address the over-sight, so I planned it for her next upcoming (not round) birthday in 2021.

At the time, I was subscribing to the Make Modern Magazine already for a few years and plugged up my courage to submit this pattern. I was so surprised about the fact, that I got a positive reply from them the very next day! Wow. So, the race was on for me to get the quilt made for my sisters birthday, with time to spare to take nice pictures of it for the magazine, before delivery (working full-time can get in the way of the sewing fun sometimes… ). Not to forget to agonize over writing a pattern for the first time and it to be actually ‘printed’ in a magazine. The ladies from Make Modern are so kind and helpful, it went a breeze.

My sister requested colours to complement her living room, so I went with the (for me unusual) pared back colour palette of solids white, grey and burgundy red. I did get a punch in with the backing, though.

While I was working on the quilt, I got a couple of comments, that the shapes look like Tetris blocks. I was debating on how to name this quilt, and wondered if Tetris blocks have names?
Guess, what, they do! So, I merged two Tetris block names for this quilt.

For the quilting, which I did on my domestic machine, I adjusted a square-labyrinth pattern to fit the block size, which I repeated all over, except on the feature fabric, where I added a fern-ish pattern to tie in, with the backing fabric, also, to make it stand out more.

One of my colleagues was so kind to trudge through the nearby park with me on a Saturday morning to take the photos for the magazine. And then it was finished. Phew.

Take care,

Rita