Experimenting

Cherri House was our guest speaker at the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild last Thursday night.  It was so inspirational to see many of the quilts from her new book City Quilts up close and personal!  Cherri shared how much quilting and creating her own unique designs has enriched her personally and healed her emotionally.  I went away hoping that some of her creativity and experimental attitude toward quilting would rub off on me!


Within the KCMQG, there are 12 of us who have joined together to exchange blocks each month.  Jaime handed out scraps from her lovely clothing construction adventures and asked us each to create something with circles as the theme for her October blocks. Oh, boy! No grass grew under my feet in wanting to stretch my creative side and experiment with circles.

I discovered this book at a used book store a while back and decide that it might spur me on to experiment with some techniques I haven't tried before.  There are lots of great pictures and clear instructions for some modern curved piecing including one block that looks circular...but really isn't. Since it was about 2 a.m by the time I finished "experimenting", I thought that the quilt block's name was very appropriate!

Being quite a little afraid to cut into Jaime's fabric, I decided to do the chicken right thing and create a experiment  sample block first. Kaffe Fassett would approve, I think!

Since it turned out so well, I have a special person in mind for my experimental block. The dressmaker scraps weren't really large enough to make Jaime's block just like my first one so I had to do more experimenting and added two grey solids and a dusty grey-blue polka dot to the mix. Here's what I came up with!  

I have to say that I am hooked on making this block and see more in my future!! Stay tuned.
Thanks, Cherri House!