2017 has been a year of sampler quilts. My biggest project, The Splendid Sampler, was started early in 2016. One hundred blocks were designed for this sew along, from lots of great designers. The sew along was hosted by Pat Sloan and Jane Davidson.
I learned a lot in this sew along, and it was a wonderful skill builder. I had never paper pieced before, and now it is one of my favorite techniques! Most of the blocks were ordinary pieced ones, but we worked with foundation paper pieced, English paper pieced, appliqué, stitchery and embroidery. The picture above shows how a stack of one hundred 6 1/2" blocks look like.
This is how they look like all spread out. I used only fabrics from my stash, but in the end it didn't really put a dent in my fabric bins.
I will assemble the blocks with sashing in between, and probably put a border around to get a decent sized quilt. This will be a long term project.
The Sewcial Bee Sampler was started early 2017. The sew along was hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell. These 25 blocks are 12 1/2" square, and there will be added sashing between them, too. I hope to get this project finished soon.
The third sew along I have been working on this year is the Have a Jolly Little Christmas by Lorna from Sew Fresh Quilts . This is a colorful Christmas sampler, and with some borders it will be decent sized and finished.
As if the above projects are not enough, I also made this 2by4 quilt top from a tutorial by Film in the Fridge. There are 448 individual rectangles in this quilt, but there is a genius technique to make the blocks and you can actually make the whole quilt top in an evening!
This will eventually be my fifth charity quilt for the year.
Keep on quilting!
