Pieced Quilts Archives

It’s Tuesday, so there must be some…..

Long before the Corona invasion, there was a guild retreat planned for the first week in May. As with everything else right now, it has been canceled.

However, while there, I was planning to work on something totally mindless…something scrap…..something with nothing but sewing and ironing!!! I was thinking either charity quilts or Quilt’s of Valor.

The last two QoV’s that I made were NOT well planned. I started out with an idea and eventually turned them into tops, although it was NOT an easy task……

And, I even failed to even take a photo of the right one with full borders on it!!!

My plan is to make one and maybe two tops in the next month or so and wanted a definite pattern to work with. Time was spent searching internet images and ideas for QOV’s, coming up with a total of 21 ideas!!!

I picked out my favorites and planned 4 of them in EQ…..

I will probably start with the first two as they are a bit less complicated but I would love to do the second set as well.

Now to get started!!!

Recently I have been looking thru my computer and finding photos of quilts from my past. I thought that I would share one or two along the way.

Border challenges were all the rage in 1996. The quilt design process included one person designing a center block, passing it on to the next person who would add a border, then on to the next to add another border, until the top reached the desired size.

It was then that our guild decided to have a border challenge. But, in this case, we would design and make the entire quilt ourselves while following certain defined parameters…..

The details have escaped my memory, but I do remember that each round had to be a specified size and most rounds had a designated type of block that needed to be included.

The final product was thrilling to me…..

Border Challenge Quilt

My favorite memory of this quilt was sitting in the back yard with Michael while I tried to draft each surrounding border. There I sat with pencil and paper….and eraser, dreaming of the future of computer aided design programs.

I chopped and changed and re-drafted each border, meaning that the next border had to be changed as well. As I fumed and erased the paper for the umpteenth time, Michael commented that he thought quilting was supposed to be fun. I looked at him and snapped….”I AM having fun…..leave me alone”!!!!

If I remember correctly, it was the first time that I pieced a background…..