I just came home from the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting. I am a newbie to the group. It is fabulous! It's held on the third Thursday evening for two hours from 7-9 pm. It's funny, inspirational, informative, charitable, creative, lovely group of very talented people, various ages from young to old (like myself) and just plain fun! There's many charity projects to get involved with, each month has a speaker or some sort of presentation, always a raffle or drawing of some sort, table of "freebies", challenge projects and a great social outlet. I come home with a new idea and a renewed motivation and inspiration. One thing I have learned is that there is no one meaning for "modern quilting". Tonight we had a great presentation on English Paper Piecing which I learned to do when I was a kid from my Grandmother! Go figure!

The biggest difference I see is the fabrics tend to be more tonal and solid as the base of modern quilts. They can be curvalinear and geometric patterns. More about a mood than an intricate design. Traditional can be made modern by color choice and arrangement. That is as close as I can come to describing modern quilts. Any body care to chime in to help me describe modern quilts?

Here is my first and only modern quilt. Had fun making this one. I used batiks, tonals, and solids. I did go back later and add some echo quilting to the bottom.

I would agree that there is no one thing that defines Modern Quilting, at least to me, but I know it when I see it. We just had an interesting speaker at our guild, Jessica Skultety, who does mostly improvisational piecing. Take a look at her website and Instagram to get an idea. I have always been a more traditional quilter, but she was inspirational.

To me, Modern quilting relates to geometic, etc. designs/patterns as opposed to most of the traditional quilt patterns ... although there is probably some "overlap" in some designs. When I look for "modern", I'm not looking for a traditional block pattern that has been randomly moved around. I look for something fresh and different ... somewhat unique in design. I guess "contemporary" could apply here.

See crazymomquilts.blogspot scroll to end of a post she has links to 98 other blogs also of modern quilts. I found her by chance some years ago when I read a bit about modern quilts and wanted to know about low volume fabrics etc I usually visit her site and several of the links to other blogs just for inspiration.
The site Reddit also has a quilts/R/ there might be a modern quilts reddit group perhaps...

Another example of everything that is old is new again.

LOL Great minds think alike!

If I had to describe my idea of Modern Quilt quilts, as I see them today, Gees Bend meets Amish. They are loosening up the early idea of all geometric all solids.

I do hope we get more quilters who embrace all that is Modern. The more quilters on the planet all the better to keep shops and expos still going on.

Well said!

As far as how I view Amish vs modern, amish is usually black background and modern usually white or grey background.