On-Demand Education: Modern Traditionalism

by Holly Clarke

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How do quilters apply traditional quilting elements to their modern quilts? Holly Clarke, a Winnipeg MQG member, explores traditional and modern quilt aesthetics and how the two are used together to create interesting modern traditional quilts. Holly includes a segment where she chooses a traditional and a modern design element and shows a real design example resulting from her selections.

Holly Clarke

About the Contributor

Holly Clarke is a graphic designer and modern quilter from Winnipeg, Canada. Holly has been sewing since the late ’90s when she studied fine arts and graphic design at the University of Manitoba.

Holly is inspired by the world around her, from shapes in nature and architecture, to bold visual graphics she sees in various pop culture media. Holly’s design aesthetic is heavily influenced by being a child of the ’80s; her parents’ home furnished with mid-century modern furniture, her mother’s love of Scandinavian textiles, her Sanrio toy collection, Saturday morning cartoons, Archie comics, and record album artwork.

Holly’s go-to color palette is bright and bold and usually includes hot pinks and sunny yellows. She loves to play with colors, seeing where a design can go with different effects such as transparency and contrast. She also enjoys pairing beautiful prints with coordinating solids to honor her love of prints while giving the eye a bit of a resting place with the solids.

Holly leans toward symmetry and balance in her designs, so she tends to design block-based quilts. She finds that during the piecing process it can be very rewarding to focus on one block at a time, knowing that it is a small part of the whole quilt. With every quilt that Holly designs, she challenges herself to try something new, whether it is with the overall quilt design, the fabrics she uses, a construction technique or the quilting process.

Find Holly on Instagram @holdmyseamripper and her website hollyclarkedesign.com.