Gemstone quilt block

Last week our local quilt guild, Desert Quilters of Nevada, hosted award-winning quilter MJ Kinman for a wonderful lecture at our quarterly meeting, followed by two days of classes. I took one of the classes, Bite-Size Gems, where we learned how to “translate” a picture of a gemstone into a pattern for a quilt or quilt block. We all worked on the same design for the class, however, to maximize our time. The technique uses a different way of paper-piecing from the usual. The design is made up of four blocks, and — like everyone else — I finished one of those in class, which you can see here. I have three more to make in order to finish the little quilt; mine will be a ruby (I hope!), though there was a huge variety of color combinations and gems in the blocks the others in the class made. Such fun!