Meet A Quilt Dude

As I've said many times before, I meet a lot of interesting people on my quilt journey and today I will introduce you to one who really stands out: Jose Hermosillo from San Diego.  First let me clarify the word "meet" because it's used in a virtual not a real sense.  I encountered Jose when he posted this picture of his Simply Santa table runner on Craftsy.  His moniker there is Quilt Dude.

What really caught my attention was his fabulous attitude, and sense of humour.  His response to the standard Craftsy question of "What are you most proud of about this project?"  was " It looks just like the picture! LOL".  This is someone having fun with quilting.  I left a comment, he responded, and eventually we had a nice little chit chat.  He generously shared more pictures of his work and a little about himself which I found very interesting, so I asked his permission to share it here with you.

"I live in San Diego, and started quilting in the mid 90's for a bit, really, on a whim. My first quilt, needless to say, was a disaster, but I was proud of it. More than the quilt itself, though, I liked the process of creating, so I decided to buy a book [my quilting bible is what I call it and still have it and refer to it regularly!]... I wanted to quilt the right way, and started making quilts - mostly for my then infant nephews and nieces. All those quilts are long gone, too. After a few years, I stopped quilting, and in 2010 one day I just decided Hey, I liked quilting, let me start doing that again....I love quilting, it relaxes me, I get lost in it for hours, sometime without meaning to."  

Much of the work from this quilt dude's hands is given as gifts.  Last Christmas he made 25 of these small Christmas trees to share (you can see on the blue one how they light up!).

This is a family tree quilt made for Christmas 2011 for his parents showing brothers, sisters, and cousins.

One of his first quilts, held by its happy owner, remains one of Jose's all time favourites.

 " I don't know what my style of quilting is, I don't want to say "modern", but I don't really like those "grandma" quilts, either. I do take inspiration from them, however. I love color, I like to play with composition [I mean, I don't stick to making symmetrical, evenly spaced and centered blocks on quilts, they can be boring to me], there is no rule, I do what I want! LOL. I also try to learn a new technique with every quilt. I'm not a big fan of curves, so I just say, I like geometrical quilts... 

This quilt is an homage to his favourite artist, Prince. It's a whole cloth on the front, with lyrics from his songs as the quilting. The back is pieced scraps of purple and white.

Below is Jose's exquisite interpretation of a Piet Mondriaan painting. 

This gorgeous quilt is pieced from batiks, with colourful squares surrounding Hoffman Bali tiles. Wow!

"As most of us do, I see through quilter's eyes, always looking at color combinations, patterns, and inspiration to possibly be put down into a quilt top. Again, as most of us do, I'm sure, I always have two, three, four projects in mind that I want to do while I currently work on finishing the two, three projects on my table and in my sewing machine."

Thank you Jose for sharing your talents in this virtual quilt show;  I for one have enjoyed it very much.  You are one creative quilt dude!