floating white shapes

1970s polyester Bowtie / Snowball quilt, 70" x 83 & 1/2", Florida

Two quilts with something in common arrived in the last week. Both have floating white shapes, secondary patterns created by the primary patterns. This 1970s polyester quilt from an eBay seller in Jacksonville, Florida is made with Bowtie blocks.

It is assembled in a way that creates a Snowball pattern, with white snowballs floating above a multicolor background when viewed from a distance.

The second quilt came as part of a lot of several quilts from a Facebook friend in Michigan who I met at QuiltCon. It is a Nancy Page design called "Ribbon Quilt". It includes a nice mx of scrappy synthetic fabrics and off white cotton.

"Ribbon Quilt" - a Nancy Page design, c. 1965, Michigan, 70" x 90"

The block is actually a four-pointed star with matching triangles in the corners of the block, but it creates the secondary pattern of floating, off-white parallelograms, which are also isosceles trapezoids.

I love these two scrappy quilts with floating white shapes. There is the illusion of space; the colors tend to recede from the white, which jumps forward-- a very clever use of color and value.