Intro to Curves Class

This November I will be teaching an intro to curved piecing at Quilter's Way in Concord, MA. I will be using a drunkards path block to teach curved piecing and we'll make this great block! Come join me on November 3rd if you want to learn curved piecing or just want to learn how I made this fun block. You can sign up here.

It's an easy and fun block to make. I threw a bunch of these together a while back into this quilt top:

I still need to quilt this, but it's hanging up at Quilter's Way right now. 

What I've Been Working On

I've been pretty busy lately with work, having just taken on a new role. I have managed to steal a few hours here and there to work on a couple of things. Just not as much time as I would like.

I finished making all nine blocks, now I'm playing with layouts. The version above is what I'm leaning towards, but I'm still not positive. (Please look past the crappy photos, these blocks are HUGE, measuring about 26" square, so they won't all fit up on my design wall. I have been laying them out on my living room floor, making it hard to photograph the full quilt. I'm standing on my couch to take these pictures, and I can't even get the whole quilt in.)

This was the first layout I tried. I wasn't crazy about it because although you get the rainbow gradation, the balance of color value wasn't working for me. I'm all about balance.

I might take these blocks outside this weekend when I have some time to play around with the layout a bit more. Hopefully I'll settle on a layout soon.

Drunk Fun

I've been working on a new quilt for the past few weeks here and there. I decided use my drunkard's path die for my AccuQuilt to make a more modern curved quilt. In addition, I thought that curves would make a good class topic for my next class at Quilter's Way.

I started by making a bunch of drunkard's path blocks and tried a bunch of different layouts. I finally settled on the one you see here by adding some squares to the pattern.

Here you can see the teal block before it's sewn together and trimmed down. I added 2" borders to the edge of the squares to match the white background width from the drunkard's path block. Before sewing the "petals" together, I trimmed them down to 1" and 1.5" inches. I left the spacing larger on the outside to leave a little more space between the blocks.

These blocks are HUGE and take up most of my design wall right now. Each block finishes around 26" square! Yikes. I'm planning on making nine blocks in a rainbow of colors. Above you can see the first five blocks. I have the yellow, orange, red-orange and red blocks left to make. Once I have all of them made, I'll probably lay all of these out on a floor or the grass outside to try a few different layouts.

Here you can see some of the other colors waiting to be pieced into these petal/flower blocks. All of these fabrics except the Lizzy House Pearl Bracelet white on white came from my stash! All the more justification to buy fabric for my stash. This is proof I actually use it!

Here's wishing everyone here in the states a happy 4th of July!

Sewing Curves

I first took a class on sewing curves about 8-9 years ago. I've made a couple of things with curves, but I never really thought much about them before. It's not like I stayed away from them on purpose, I just never really thought about it. Recently, as I was thinking up my next class to teach at Quilter's Way, I thought sewing curves would be a fun class.

I decided to use the popular drunkard's path block to make a fun quilt. I pulled a bunch of fabrics in a rainbow assortment with the help from my sister and got to work. I used an AccuQuilt die to cut all of my drunkard's path pieces, saving a lot of time.

I played with a few layouts and decided on a floral-type arrangement.

Right now I have two blocks complete, all of the drunkard's path sections sewn together and am in the process of cutting all of the square and sashing component of these blocks. These flower blocks measure around 26" square, so this will be a pretty good size lap quilt when it's done since there will be nine blocks total.