End of Summer Finishes (2 of 3)

 

Steam Punk was photographed yesterday. I had long admired the design but was put off by the curves. At the start of 2020 one of my goals was to get more comfortable with curved piecing; this seemed like a good way to do that. The blocks are all hand pieced and it was tremendous fun planning each one and watching it come to fruition.

My friend Bobbi claims to be smitten with Jen Kingwell and her patterns. Bobbi has made several JK quilts. Early into the smittency, I investigated JK and found most of her patterns to be too busy for my taste. Then I discovered A Wild Ride which I made in a controlled colorway. I wasn't overjoyed with my results but making the quilt added to my paper-piecing confidence level. And I realized by the end that a controlled color way was not the way to make a JK project!

Since then, I've found that for me the way to do a busy JK design is to develop a recipe to follow. For Steam Punk the recipe was [mostly] fussy-cut centers, carefully chosen pies with coordinating crust, and low volume backgrounds, using just four fabrics for each block.

I gained a lot of experience with appliquéing the centers of these blocks. I prolly could use some more practice with this.

If you've followed this blog recently, you know I'm hand-piecing another JK pattern, Halo. I'm loving every minute of it and am undaunted by the curves involved. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say I've caught the JK smittency from Bobbi, but look what's on my wish list for someday! I'm thinking this pattern might be just the thing to bring in a new year (if 2020 ever ends)!