Curves and Spikes

At last, I've learned to sew curves! Now I can make New York Beauty blocks. Not only can I sew them, but I can also draw those curves and blocks in Electric Quilt 6! I sewed these three. I'll be making a set of 25 with flowers, mostly roses.

Sewing these curves was one thing. I needed to learn how to put the curves together to construct a block for my guild's opportunity quilt. The designers of the quilt know that I love paper-piecing, but they didn't know I had never sewn curves. The three NYB blocks are this page were my practice blocks. I think I did a great job, even for a beginner at curved piecing.

For the opportunity quilt block, I was expected to leave the paper on, but I don't think I'll do that again. Leaving on the paper does not give the opportunity to ease and utilize the bias curves.

Drawing those curves and blocks into Electric Quilt was something else! I used Andrea Bishop's EQ6 arc tutorial to clone and rotate sections of the NYB block. That didn't work for me in every case, so I also used the EQ6 User's Manual to draw, partition, and stagger nodes on arcs.

I received additional inspiration from two books: Radiant New York Beauties by Valorie Wells and Karen K. Stone Quilts.

The blocks I'm working on now are from a collection of New York Beauty patterns by Christina Carl. She used to have an active website called Quilter's Corner Club. The patterns were offered free as a block of the month series in 2007. As of this writing, no one seems to know how to contact Christina Carl, an enthusiastic and talented designer. She certainly inspired me.

Great States Quilt Math

Just check out Iowa! This block is 12 inches, and I paper-pieced it. All those little triangles!

I own a copy of the teacher resource book Great States Quilt Math by Cindi Mitchell from Scholastic. The book contains reproducibles for practicing arithmetic skills. Plus, the students get to color real quilt blocks. My 5th Graders love doing these pages for homework.

Where did the blocks come from?

Some are similar to the clipart blocks by Dawn Stewart at Dawn's Quilting Clip Art State Blocks.

Others I found in Electric Quilt's BlockBase Collection by Barbara Brackman utilizing some of the Hearth and Home Magazine Collection of state blocks.

Bella Online also has Quilt Blocks of the States Series by Judie Bellingham and guest author Kim Noblin.

I have ordered editor Barbara F. Bannister's book State Capitals Quilt Blocks: 50 Patchwork Patterns from "Hearth and Home" Magazine.

I'm still curious -- where did Mitchell, Stewart, Brackman, Bellingham, Noblin, and Bannister get the blocks?

Paper-Piecing

I love paper-piecing!!

Went to a guild meeting one evening a few years back. We had been told to bring our machines to learn this technique that Carol Doak had taught the guild members years ago. The "new" technique for making blocks was paper-piecing. I was hooked!!



By that time, I had joined the newsgroup RCTQ (rec.crafts.textiles.quilting). Carol Doak posted in that newsgroup back then. Nowadays she has her own Carol Doak Quilting Yahoo Group where she gives advice and free patterns. The photo here shows my versions of the 2007-2008 BOM. I've put each block into Electric Quilt's EQ6, and I have been playing with layouts to include all the blocks in a quilt.

So what happens to those patterns once I have made a quilt? I enlarged one of the patterns, added interlocking borders, and made a small lap quilt. Now I'd like to use one of the patterns for the local Ben Franklin March Block of the Month.

Carol Doak's patterns are so beautiful, I'd like to find lots of ways to use them!