Crosscut and More

As some of you know I was out in Colorado a few weeks ago filming my Craftsy class, Improvisational Piecing - Modern Design. I had so much fun with my team, my producer, Kate, camera guy and future quilter Marshall and my switcher, Ivana.  Great people make for a great experience even though I had to be in front of a camera.

In the class I'll focus on teaching three techniques from the book with new adaptations and twists and of course new quilt designs, five of them. I'll keep you posted on the status of the class and the release date.

 The one advantage of doing work in front of a camera is having loads of step-outs to work with when you get home.  This is the Crosscut quilt from the class.  I love that this quilt looks complex, but is so easy to piece.  I also love how the negative space flows in and out of the blocks.

I found a new quilting pattern to use on this quilt and I've fallen head over heals for it.

It's like the serpentine stitch that I use a lot, but instead of being rounded it's pointy and forms these cool diamonds.  I think you'll be seeing it a bunch from me.

Having extra blocks means I had time to experiment a bit.  I made a few blocks into half square triangles and you know with hst's the possibilities are endless...diamonds, pinwheels, zig zags, chevrons, etc.  I love the simple diamond, but it's amazing what a 6" shift will do.  It creates this "sliding triangle block" on the left which I think is kinda cool.  When you turn it vertically it creates a almost rectangular pinwheel.  I think I'll quilt these up to keep as class samples.  They're almost large enough to make into quilts, but I'm out of all of these fabrics.

I also made a larger version of the Crosscut quilt.  The quilt for the class is a bit small for me.  It's great for a sample, but I wanted a larger version that I could snuggle under.  This one is perfect.  I've added it to my stack of quilt tops to quilt.

I've got step outs from the other four quilts too....lots more possibilities and quilts that need to be made.  If only there were more hours in the day, more days in the week, more weeks in the year...