Sunday, May 10, 2009

wonky amish?

here are my (two... yeah, there was a lot of fabric!) blocks for wendy. the deep solid colors in them remind me of the amish quilts i grew up with, but the improvised piecing is definitely modern. i'm looking forward to seeing this quilt finished!

since i loved all of the colors and didn't want the arrangement of them in the block to look too pre-meditated, i decided to try my own version of "paper bag piecing." I just put all of the fabrics into a paper bag and pulled them out each time I was ready to add a new piece to the block. I then cut (with scissors, but still surprisingly straight....) off the size of strip that I needed and sewed it on, then pulled out the next color.
it's not particularly wonky, unless you count the unevenness of the width of the strips, but i hope that's okay.
both of the blocks ended up being at least 11" square, so you should have plenty of wiggle room for squareing them up the way you want, Wenday. I love the unifying idea of the black as the centerpiece of each block. Thanks for this fun assignment!

4 comments:

Rebekah said...

Cute blocks! I love your fabric selection method :)

Malissa said...

Lovely connection to those old Amish quilts. I just watched a documentary last week about Amish and Mennonite quilts and it definitely got my wheels turning. Fun to then see your "wonky" squares after all that. Lovely!

One Shabby Chick said...

What a great idea with the "surprise" piecing :-)
I may have to try that on an improv quilt! These are so beautiful!

Wendy said...

I love it - forced improvisation. They're beautiful!