Are These the Same Quilt?

A tale of two very different quilts on the design wall.

On the left, completely hand pieced traditional blocks. (Referred to as Aunt Dinah in Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Blocks.)

On the right, improvised words that encompass the names of places quilting has brought me - only the Canadian stops currently on the wall.

They probably look like two different quilters made them, yet they still both feel very me, to me. I guess that is probably obvious to me since I am the one who made them. The hand pieced blocks, while traditional in style, are all me in fabrics. That’s because why would I use 2 fabrics when I can use 36? This is my more is more mentality when it comes to picking fabric. So each block is unique and no fabric is used twice in the blocks. I will use some of the background blocks again for the setting triangles, but I am happy with that. I also am not repeating fabrics on the place name blocks. So that vibrant energy in fabric selection is what feels like me the most.

The other thing is that I would actually consider them both improvised, not just the place names. my intention when I started the hand pieced blocks was to just experiment and make one. I’d never hand pieced a block a before. But I liked it so I made another. After a few I decided I would make at least a lap size quilt, thus figuring out I should aim for 16 blocks. Other than the colour story of this spring time joy, I had nothing preplanned. I picked fabrics one block at a time. When I had enough for the layout I thought I wanted, I realized it was all wrong and played about on the design wall. Back to the stash to make a few more blocks. Now I generally define improv as starting without knowing where you are going to end up. So even though I was using a traditional block, with a traditional piecing method, the process is very improvisational. I had no idea where I was going when I started. Same goes for the place names. Still not sure where that one is heading.

Isn’t quilting fun?