Meet modern-contemporary quilter Anke B. Calzada - a global citizen, lifelong learner, and creative explorer who turns traditional blocks into minimalist works of art inspired by travel, texture, and curiosity.
By the Make Modern team
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While her design business may be relatively new, Anke has had decades of experience as a quilter, and many years in quilting related business in Europe. For many quilters, an interest in quilting comes with their first exposure to the craft – and this was the case for Anke, who attended a local quilt show with her mother almost thirty years ago.
“I fell in love with the abstract geometric patterns and intriguing colours of the quilts on display and was immediately hooked. At that time, most of my friends were into watercolour or silk painting or practised pencil sketch drawing. I envied them a lot for their talent to create stunning paintings or illustrations with just a few quick paintbrush strokes – I couldn’t (and still can’t) put a decent drawing on paper without using a ruler, set square and compass. Patchwork opened a completely unknown and exciting world of artistic visual expression for me!” she says of her first foray into quilting.
Anke is a self-taught quilter, and much of this happened through trial and error, pre-internet style. Her first quilt took a year to complete, but by the time she’d finished it, she’d already gathered many ideas for new patterns. “My very first quilt was way too ambitious, a queen-size quilt with 24 star blocks for my bed! I didn’t have a rotary cutter (I didn’t even know such a cool tool existed) and made all the templates out of cardboard, cut the fabrics with scissors. I didn’t know anything about machine quilting either but found a lovely but unfortunately very complex hand quilting stencil. It took me about a year to finish my very first quilt, but I didn’t give up!”
Anke’s quilting journey continued with countless more quilts, as she “experimented with various piecing and hand- and machine-quilting techniques, discovered my passion for English paper piecing and foundation paper piecing, ventured into art quilting and improv.”
Quilt pictured is Bitter Lemon Quilt by Anke B. Calzada from Make Modern Issue 44
While she’s got a wealth of quilting knowledge already, Anke is one of those quilters who is always eager to learn more. “I’d like to experiment more with skinny inset strips to achieve a more minimalistic look and feel and I think I should definitely give free-form curves and organic shapes a second chance. Also, I want to learn new surface design and fabric manipulation techniques to add more texture to my pieces. Two years ago I also tried the stitched Ori Nui Shibori resist dyeing technique for the first time and absolutely loved the results. Plant-based and ice dyeing is also still on my bucket list.”
Her quilting style hasn’t changed a lot over the years, though she continues to refine it. “When I look at my old quilts, I think my overall style hasn’t changed that much over the years, but it certainly is much more refined and balanced design- and colourwise, my quilts are crafted with more attention to detail and at a much higher level of technical perfection,” she says. “I would describe my overall quilting style today as ‘modern-contemporary’. I still like to work with traditional block-based designs, but with a modern twist. Sometimes, I combine two or more blocks to create interesting secondary patterns, deconstruct them or use a reduced colour palette to achieve a more minimalist look and feel. I also like to combine different techniques and add improvisational and/or scrappy elements to my designs to make them truly unique.”
One thing Anke’s always been conscious of is following her own path, rather than the popular trends. “I always marched to my own beats, went only by my own intuition trying not to follow any current trends dictated by the mighty US quilt industry, be it certain quilt patterns, colourways or popular fabric collections by famous designers.”
Instead, she draws inspiration from her life and travels. “I’m a German native but consider myself a true global citizen at heart. Exploring the world has always been my lifeblood and an infinite source of inspiration. When you go through life with curiosity, a wide heart and open eyes, you meet wonderful people and discover fascinating cultures. And so, my postgraduate business and language studies let me to Japan, my consulting job to the US, and the love of my life to South America,” she explains.
“I love to travel, immerse myself in new cultures with all my senses and find inspiration in the little unexpected things along the way. I enjoy the hustle and bustle of world metropolises just as much as the tranquillity of lonely natural landscapes in vast salt deserts, secluded Andean mountain areas or on the Atlantic coast. I am fascinated by the patterns and the play of colour in traditional folk art, but also love modern abstract art, urban architecture and the fabulous world of geometric shapes,” Anke says.
“Also, Scandinavian interior design fascinates me because of its perfect balance between minimalism and cosiness. And I’m drawn to the minimalistic design approach of the Bauhaus architects and artists.”
For Anke, when design inspiration strikes, she likes to test her ideas with fabric straight away. “I am a very impulsive and spontaneous quilter and when a creative inspiration strikes me out of the blue, I can’t sit still and let it pass but have to instantly give it a try and actually see if my design idea can be translated into fabric,” she says. While this is mostly a great experience, sometimes if can backfire. “When I am too impatient and make a hasty decision, something is usually wrong. More than once, I have ended up unpicking complete quilts because it just didn’t feel right. But I learned to just wait and listen to what my quilt tells me even if this dialogue takes a while.”
As far as fabric goes, this is something that has evolved for Anke over the years as she embraces a more minimalist approach to fabric. “In the past, I used all kinds of large- and small-scale, abstract geometric, floral and Bali prints in various colourways and was a fanatic fabric hoarder on every occasion. I lived in Japan for a while and on my way back, my suitcase was 12 kilos overweight, stuffed with traditional Japanese fabrics! From my family trips to Argentina, I still keep lots of traditional Aguayo hand-weavings made of plant-dyed wool. I also hate to throw away scraps and find it really hard to say ‘no’ to generous fabric donations from family and quilt friends,” she says, adding, “Today, I prefer lowvolume fabrics and use mostly blenders or solids in neutral, earthy tones and buy fabrics much more deliberately and sustainably. When I discovered the Grunge fabrics by Basic Grey for Moda Fabrics in 2019, I was fascinated by their bright yet muted colour palette. I use them to add colour accents to my pieces, often in combination with rustic Essex Yarn-Dyed Linen or Quilter’s Linen (both Robert Kaufman) in greys or natural tones. I’ve decided to keep only fabrics that I really love. I try to systematically destash and use up all my old prints for my ongoing textile experiments and for preemie quilts for a local charity initiative.”
Like many of us, Anke has definite favourite parts of the quilting process, and for her it’s the beginning and the end. “Instead of a sketch book, I use the patchwork design software EQ8 for almost all of my design work because it offers endless creative possibilities and makes it so easy to play with shapes, experiment with different colourways and develop stunning quilt layouts just with a few mouse clicks. Cutting hundreds of fabric pieces, endless chain piecing, preparing quilt sandwiches, and burying threads after quilting are not exactly my favourite steps in the quilting process. But adding the binding is one of my favourite steps. I finish all my works with a hand-sewn binding and I really enjoy taking the time and deliberately slowing down to put these last tiny stitches to my piece no matter how long it takes,” she enthuses.
Anke spent many years as a hobby quilter, but opportunities opened up for her in the European quilting industry over a decade ago. “As communications consultant and editor, I teamed up with the international online portal Quilt around the World in 2010. Together, we initiated multicultural quilt projects such as international block swaps and design challenges, created a mystery quilt series called Patchwork Puzzles, developed the educational course series My Year of Design for textile crafters, self-published several quilt books, and organised group exhibitions in Germany and abroad. Now, our focus has shifted towards becoming a full-service provider for the EQ8 patchwork design software offering licenses, online courses, workshops and one on one coaching while building an EQ8-community especially for German-speaking quilters.”
And more recently, Anke has turned her hand (and followed her heart) to quilt design. She explains: “When I turned 50 last year, I decided to follow my heart and founded Pasacana (@pasacana_designs) in the middle of the first lockdown as additional creative playground. My label features quilt designs for timeless, classy and sustainable textile home accessories and decorative wall art with a distinct look and feel as a creative liaison of modern-minimalist Scandinavian and Japanese elements with a touch of easy-going Mediterranean and South American joie de vivre.”
While her quilting business is quite new, Anke has exciting things planned for its future. “In just a few weeks, I will move from my little creative corner in our living room into my very own Pasacana design studio. I still can’t believe that this is really happening and have to pinch myself, because this is my biggest dream come true! There I will have plenty of space for my sewing machine and my fabrics, for a dedicated cutting table and a large design wall. I’ll also have empty walls to display some of my quilts and to set up a photo and video studio to take my first steps into the world of online patchwork classes. As soon as the whole infrastructure is set up, I also plan to teach in-person courses and organise a regular quilt café as a casual place for local quilters to meet and chat about their projects in the works, find new inspiration in my large quilt book library, exchange creative ideas, and get hands-on support from fellow quilters, she enthuses – and it certainly sounds great to us!
Anke Barbara Calzada, German native but global citizen at heart, is a passionate quilt artist, pattern designer, editor and co-author of two Patchwork Puzzle books. In early 2021, she founded her own design label www.pasacana.com for one-of-a-kind textile home accessories and quilt patterns inspired by her international travel adventures.
This excerpt is part of a full article that was originally published in Make Modern Issue 48.
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