What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I love having room to show off quilting motifs, and making the sashing, either pieced and/or appliqued, as the coloured bits of the design with a few scattered blocks can leave plenty of room for quilting.

Love the first design but would replace some of the blocks with blank spaces for quilting. The second design has space for quilting with out any changes.

Very interesting.

This project emerged after I set pieced block designs into the sashing of a quilt, and decided that I would try to draw up some blocks especially to use as sashing, as well as using any or every pieced block design!

The curves are doable by machine, but the points would be easier to do by hand.

I love the shape created by the sashing around the blocks, perfect for framing quilted motifs. Which leads me to think I need to follow up that thought!

I love playing with quilt top designs using the sashing for a large proportion of the overall effect.

I also like that many of the designs I find playing with sashing leave plenty of space for quilting to share the limelight.

A couple of days ago I shared some designs with much more elaborate sashing than is usual. I opened the project file while looking for the pieced sashing designs I had stashed away, and carried on looking, and wondering what if I challenged you to try drawing some pieced sashing.

I suggest you start with 3 inch wide sashing for 12 inch blocks, that is draw a 3 x 12 inch rectangular block with a 3 inch square block for the corners.

The example I have shared above include a version of the corner block to use at the quilt ...

Sometimes I play with sashing instead of blocks in Electric Quilt, and I have left the block lines in the design above so you can see that the blocks, even if they have some applique on them, are not the stand out feature of the design.

The blocks forming the cross in the second one are connected by pieced sashing, with the contrast strips placed across the sashing strip, instead of the more usual lengthwise placing.

The sashing in the design above creates some spots for feature blocks or a framed spot for quilting motifs.

Love the last one, and ...

Same as yesterday … almost!

Can you pick the difference?

Which one would you prefer?

I would use today’s version around simple applique blocks, yesterday’s for more complex designs.

I have been playing with the block design I shared a couple of days ago, which I had hoped to use between applique blocks instead of sashing.

I love the design but it has to be sashing … pieced with a little bit of applique.

With more play time I will change the quilting motifs to applique, and add quilting motifs to the outside blocks, but that will not happen today.

Some intricate piecing in the sashing, but I think if the pieces were given straight seams it would still work … and certainly provide some very interesting designs.

There is also plenty of spaces where pieced or applique blocks would usually be for some interesting quilting to be showcased. Even very simple sashing can create an interesting design.

Sashing squares can be much more elaborate when most of the blocks are empty spaces and the sahing in relatively simple.

Usually we make a heap of blocks, then start thinking about adding sashing … but in this project file there are minimal blocks to make, then make the sashing, much of it for plain blocks.

I think I will have to start leaving out the few blocks and just adding quilting to the plain blocks.

However, I will leave that project on the to-do list until after I have completed tidying up my EQ library system, and I am thinking that will be sooner than I thought it might be, but still a month or two away.