Fancy Four-Patch Tutorial

This is my 6th year coming up with the Block of the Month designs for my guild Empire Quilters in New York City. 

The current block for November is the Fancy Four-Patch, shown above. This is a quick and easy block. You start with four 6" squares: 2 reds and 2 whites. See the instructions here.

Quilters' Signature Quilt - Block of the Month

The Empire Quilters Block of the Month for September is this simple, slightly wonky, 6" signature block. Quilters write their name, birth date and location on a 3" block, then sew a 2 1/2" wide strip to the sides and the top and bottom. Place a 6" square ruler on the block, perhaps in a wonky fashion, and trim.

See details here. I think this will make an interesting quilt.

Members might decide to make blocks honoring their friends and relatives who are quilters/sewists too. The way we do it is: enter your name in the drawing once for each block that you contribute. 

If you'd like to use this link for your guild BOM, please help yourself.

Food Themed Tile Quilt - BOM

This is Empire Quilters' BOM for October, a food-themed raw-edge applique tile quilt block. These are so much fun to make. Perfect for novelty fabric collectors. With so many quilters contributing blocks, there will be a huge variety of food fabrics. I'll show you all the blocks after the meeting on Oct. 13.

Want too see a Raw-Edge Tile Quilt pattern? 

My Design Wall Today

This "Staircase" quilt is made from the October "Block of the Month" for Empire Quilters. Coming up with block ideas is one of my little jobs. This is my third year doing that. It keeps me thinking and drawing little designs on napkins and envelopes. Haha.

The block can be seen in the upper left corner, black and light pink. But some of the blocks seems to spread into a non-square shape because I used leftover units in between the blocks. See the photo below. My 27 yo son asked me to make him one of these. No flowers, he wants 1960's style geometrics. I'll show you when I make it.

If you'd like to see how simple this block is to make, take a look at the Empire BOM blog.

Block of the Month - Red and White, Quilter's Choice.

You thought that was it for red and whites for a while? Not quite. I had to come up with a Block of the Month for my guild, Empire Quilters in NYC. We won't all be making this block, the design is quilter's choice. But we'll all use red and white to make any block we want, as long as it measures 8 1/2" square. The result will be a sampler quilt. I'm tempted to make more like this one and do a whole quilt. Here's how this block was made: DIRECTIONS: The strips were cut 1.25" wide. Sew 6 strips together. Then cut this new piece into 1.25" strips. Flip every other one so you have a checkerboard, and sew them together. Add a white border. Cut 4 red triangles by eye and sew one to each corner. Then add a red border. Trim to 8.5." Voila! Do this 64 times for a quilt! Haha. We'll see. It might happen.

BOM Tile Quilt - Giveaway Winner Announced

The Empire Quilters guild Block of the Month a few months ago was a raw-edge applique tile block. Pauline Hazard won the blocks and here she is with her finished quilt. Her 11 year-old granddaughter loves this quilt, so of course it belongs to her now. The backing is a soft cuddly flannel fabric. You can see that Pauline added two borders along the outer edge. Terrific job Pauline!

The winner of the Mickey and Minnie fat quarters is Christine of the Once Upon a Quilt blog in Queensland, Australia! She'll use them to make something for Sophie, her little grand-daughter, so Sophie is really the winner. :)

More giveaways coming soon.