Teeny Tiny Pieces!

I absolutely love precision piecing - and you would never have found me saying that a few years ago. My shortcomings are always sitting in front of me, taunting me and challenging me to overcome them. After years of focusing on applique, I dived in with the goal of forcing myself to learn precision piecing. Accurate precision piecing, that is!

And lo and behold... I became addicted to it! Below are several quilts that required precision piecing - some of them were more challenging than others, but they all gave me an opportunity to improve my skills. If you have something that you just can't do well... you won't improve if you don't try to improve. Define your goals and work toward them; you might be surprised at the results.

"Floating Stars"
This quilt was based on an antique quilt that I saw in Houston a few years ago. The quilt is twin-sized; sometimes it is hard to tell how large a quilt is by the photo. Each of the Ohio Star blocks are about 3-1/2 inches square.

"Ancient Stars"
This quilt is also twin-sized but the Ohio Star blocks are a bit larger: 5 inches. I love scrappy quilts like this one; they let your eyes dance across the face of the quilt.

"Omigosh"
I warned you that I got addicted to precision piecing, didn't I? This quilt, with lots of half-inch squares in it, was fun to make. I made all the blocks and then took it with me to a retreat to assemble the top; people who saw me working on it kept saying, "Oh, my gosh!" That's how I came up with the name of the quilt.

"Postage Due"
Now do you believe me? Yes, I became addicted to small little pieces!! Here is a close-up of one of the blocks:
This postage-stamp quilt was based on a quilt that I spotted at an antique show in Cat Springs, Texas. The squares in the antique quilt were 1-inch, but that didn't stop me from making my squares one half-inch in size. The quilt is very heavy, since each half-inch square has three times as much seam allowance buried under it than you see in the square on the quilt top. With this many little pieces, it took me a long time to assemble the quilt top - three 3-day weekends!

And now, one more quilt in this post:

"Twinkles"
This quilt started out as an edge-to-edge Irish Chain quilt, but I decided half-way through the project that I was not happy with the work and needed to finish it quickly and move on to the next project. Nothing is faster than wide borders, when it comes to finishing a quilt top.

I will post more quilt photos in the next week or so. I have a LOT more quilts!!!

Sue
All quilts (c)1997-2008 Susan H. Garman