Samplers

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My First Quilt
Look Again!
Réussite



These quilts are all samplers. Samplers may not always have the same continuity of style that other piecing schemes have, but they do have one advantage for the quilter: the pattern isn't boring, since it changes with each block!

My First Quilt


This is not really white on white; it's white and off-white. This was my first quilt, and I made the blocks from patterns and techniques in a Georgia Bonesteel book. The sampler consists of twelve 12" machine-pieced and hand-quilted blocks, each with a 3" sashing hand quilted with cables, making it 54" x 72". At one point, my scissors slipped, so my initials are machine embroidered in one corner to cover the slip. I lap quilted each block and then put them all together, finishing in 1985, when the quilt won a blue ribbon at our county fair.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Look Again!

I finally finished quilting this project at the end of December, 1999. This is the first larger (51 1/2" x 65 1/2") one that I've designed and laid out using QuiltPro. What a difference in ease of drafting and figuring! The blue and white color scheme is a cool, refreshing look. I used blocks from the QP library, but I designed the border myself, basing it on one in an Eleanor Burns book. It's machine pieced and hand quilted. There's a sort of visual trick in this sampler, as it appears that there is a sashing between the blocks. However, the dark blue "sashing" is really a cross in the center of each block! If you'd like the QuiltPro project file, it's here.
 
 


Réussite

I belong to an email group called Quilt en France, which is for francophone quilters -- a truly nice group of people from all over. Our list mom came up with the idea of having a challenge, in which we would make a prescribed block each month and post the results online for the group to see. The blocks could be in our own choice of fabrics, which made for some wonderful differences in what had started out as the same block for each of us. When I made my blocks, I didn't bother to redraft the downloaded patterns, so almost all of them turned out to be different sizes -- a nightmare when it came time to set them together into a top. Luckily, I took a class from Sharyn Craig at Quilt Camp in the Pines in July, 2004, and she came up with some really imaginative ways to standardize the sizes of the blocks I'd decided to use. Success! (And the source of the quilt's name.) I set the nine blocks on point and then floated Lemoyne Stars between them. The setting triangles are a Sharyn Craig idea, too, and they give the impression of an inner border. After finishing the top, I machine quilted it in variegated soft blues. The quilt, finished in January, 2005, measures approximately 56" square.



And here's a detail of the quilting, which is mainly in free-motion feathered motifs:




The strange thing about this quilt is that I couldn't ever figure out why I was making it -- in other words, I had no plan for the finished project, which is very unusual for me. However, the reason for that became clear as I quilted it. The quilt itself began "telling" me that it was destined to go to my terrific step-sister! So that's where it lives now, and I hope she's getting lots of warm use out of it. :)




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