Tag Archives: improvisational quilt

New England Quilt Museum

My Jane Stickle Quilt and my Stormy quilts are on display at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA now until May 29, 2021. If you get a chance please visit.

Slice and Dice Piecing

I am working on a quilt with blocks that are based on a technique in Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen. The book has some great ideas and illustrations, but I thought it might help to see step by step photos. The tricky part is matching up the first set of strips after the second set has been added. I drew a seam line to help line things up when pinning.

: Slice and Dice pg 83

: 1.5″ strips on a 14.5″ background

: Mark where the strips were placed

: Line up the ruler where the marks are

: Cut the first set of slices

: Sew the first set of strips

: Piece the square

: Cut the second set of slices where marked

: Sew the second set of strips

: I drew the seam lines to help match the slices

: Pin along the seam line

: Unfold to check the pinning

: Piece the square together

: Trim to 12.5″ square

My plan is to make a quilt with these blocks alternating with square in a square blocks.

Improvising with Scraps

It certainly has been quite a while, but I finally have time to post again! Back in March I brought my improvised scrappy blocks to the Boston Modern Quilt Guild Retreat and put a quilt top together.

I finished this quilt a couple of months ago on my long arm.

The back of the quilt has a few of the blocks, too.

I am still saving my scraps and sorting them by color, but maybe I should throw them all in together and try a different approach next time! No matter what, it is a great way to be thrifty and also environmentally green. Reuse, recycle, and don’t waste any of your precious fabric!

Janette’s Bird Quilt

I wanted to thank Janette for sharing a photo of her bird quilt with me. You can see that she was inspired by my bird quilt to create her own quilt with her bird fabrics.

Because Janette had an idea of how she wanted to put her quilt together before she prepared the blocks she did not end up with Y seams like I did! Sometimes a little planning makes sense even if you are improvising.

I am so happy that I was able to inspire someone with my bird quilt and would love to hear from anyone who has been inspired by my blog!

One More Quilt for Boston

I just finished the quilting for this Top.

It is one of the many quilts that the Boston Modern Quilt Guild has put together as part of our Quilts for Boston effort. 25 of the quilts will be displayed in the medical tent at the Boston Marathon this year and others are available to those affected by the tragic bombing at last year’s marathon.

I am not even sure who put the top together. It appeared at the Boston Modern Quilt Guild retreat last month and I told Alice I would finish it. I really like this one. The blocks are quintessentially modern and quite a few are wonderfully improvised. This is the third one that I have quilted. Here is a blog article about the first one, but the second one made its way out of the house without a photograph!