Tips & Inspiration: Sewing Curves!

Last month’s arrival of the new book by Angela Pingel, Curved Quilting with Confidence: 16 Modern Designs with Quarter-Circle Blocks, prompted us to gather some additional curved piecing resources and inspiration to share with our Creative Minds. Also pictured above, left to right, are Retro Pieced Curved Pieced Quilts by Erin Grogan, Modern Scrap Quilts by Sylvia Schaefer, and Freehand Curve Quilts by our friend and local improv quilter Cindy Grisdela.

Sew Kind of Wonderful introduced their first Quick Curve ruler in 2011 to transform the process of cutting and sewing curves, making it fast, easy, and consistent! Above, left to right, their Butterfly Fields pattern book (20 different curved butterfly blocks), Wonderful Curves Sampler Quilt Block Book and their Wonder Curve Ruler. Visit our website for more Sew Kind of Wonderful and Wonder Curve ruler products.

Dudley Shugart, one of our quilting instructors, is a certified instructor from Sew Kind of Wonderful, and she recently bought in the above four wallhangings to share with us. Each is sewn from Posh Seasonal patterns using her own fabric choices — it's fun to see different looks depending on what fabrics are used. We also have individual Posh Seasonal kits that that include fabrics from FreeSpirit designers so you can immediately get sewing. Visit our website to shop all of our Quilt & Fabric Kits.

Above, Posh Santa and Posh Holly, pieced and quilted by Dudley. Her Pre-Beginner Quilting class coming up beginning October 31 — if you’re a little bit afraid of or intimidated by a sewing machine but want to make quilts, this is the class for you! It's the ideal precursor for the true novice to confidently move on to Dudley’s 4-session Beginning Quilting at our shop in January.

Saginaw St Quilts — designer Karla Alexander — creates amazing patterns to challenge yourself with curves! Above, left to right is Roundabout, Blue Onion and Spin Cycle. In addition, Karla has designed the Oval All Ways and Circle Savvy rulers for Creative Grids — they make cutting and piecing curved blocks for her patterns easy and precise! Shop all quilt patterns now »

Many quilter’s first experiment with curves with the traditional Drunkard’s Path block. Try it our for yourself with the BERNINA WeAllSew blog post Drunkard’s Path Block Basics by Lee Heinrich from Freshly Pieced, who writes “If you’ve never tried curved piecing before, it may seem intimidating at first, but all it really takes is a few tips and a little practice.” Download her template and follow her instructions and you’ll be sewing perfect curves in no time!

As part of her Passiflora Quilt Along, Hayley Grzych offers tips and techniques to piece the curved orange peel blocks that make up her Part 3: Round One Medallion. Pictured above, Haley shares that a stiletto is “the most valuable tool in my kit when it comes to piecing curves. A fine-point stiletto can be used to hold your curves in line right up to your needle.” Another tip from Haley is to sew “with the concave piece up. This piece is under a lot more stress, being stretched along this curve, and you’ll have much more control of the process with this on the top side.” Visit the BERNINA WeAllSew blog for Hayley’s tutorial — download her template and follow along.

We hope these products and resources inspire you to give curved piecing a try for the first time. Or if you’re already experienced, challenge yourself with new blocks and layouts!

Above, Angela Pingel’s Flower Power quilt from her lates book, Curved Quilting with Confidence: 16 Modern Designs with Quarter-Circle Blocks.